


In Resistance

by all_my_dreams_and_ambitions



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Gangsters, Angst, Boxer! rey, Drugs, F/M, Han doesn't die, Law Enforcement, Mentions prison, NSFW, Oral Sex, Self-Hatred, Sex, Sexual Content, Violence, Work In Progress, alternate univers, cop leia, cop! finn, cop! poe, gang leader! kylo, human! chewbacca, mechanic! rey
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-05-20 04:45:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 22
Words: 35,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5992108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/all_my_dreams_and_ambitions/pseuds/all_my_dreams_and_ambitions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An alternate universe where Kylo Ren has made questionable decisions throughout his life that led him to become one of the most powerful men in the First Order gang that runs rampant in the city of Resistance. He's the First Knight out of the seven Knights of Ren that druglord and gang-leader Snoke has created to "take care" of all the people who owe the gang money or decide to snitch. He blames his uncle Luke Skywalker for winding up where he is and would like nothing more than to see him pay for what he's done to him. </p><p>On the weekdays Rey is a mechanic at Solo Salvage, owned by an ex-drag racer Han Solo and his best friend (a massive, hairy, foreign dude with an accent nobody can understand) they call Chewbacca. On the weekends, however, Rey makes extra money in an underground boxing league. She quickly learns that not everybody in Resistance are who they appear to be. </p><p>Leia Organa is the chief of police in the city of Resistance. She's dedicated the past ten years of her career to try and take down the rapid rise of the massive gang known as the First Order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have never written a fic for Star Wars before, but I am totally in love with Reylo and decided it was time! I'm sorry if they seem out of character for any reason. Any mistakes in this chapter are my own. Please read and enjoy!

           Nights like this were his favorite; it was cold, damp, and miserable. Nobody would be out wandering the streets on a night like this. Anybody with a right mind would be bundled up in their homes snuggled up under a blanket drinking tea…or whatever the hell normal people did with their free time.

            Kylo leaned against the building as he dragged on a cigarette. The brick was chilling even through the black long sleeved shirt he wore. His contact should be arriving any minute…if he were smart. The Seven didn’t take kindly to those who turned tail and ran. Those who did suffered for it greatly.

            A quick look at the blinking LED clock in the bar window across the street confirmed that it was nearly time for his contact to arrive. He would be on time, Kylo knew, the cockroaches he worked for didn’t dare keep him waiting.

            He snubbed out his cigarette and placed the burnt out filter in the pocket of his black pants. He pulled on his leather gloves and picked up his mask from where he had set it by his feet. Perhaps “mask” wasn’t the best word to describe it. It was more of a helm. It was heavy made out of painted aluminum, the eye slits were mirrored plastic, and the price of it hadn’t been cheap.

            When Snoke promoted him to the position of First Knight he suggested— _commanded_ —that he get something to hide his face from his victims and other members of the gang. In the unlikely event that his victim got away or there was a snitch among them, his face wouldn’t be out there for every cop in Resistance to see.

            The sound of rapid footfalls stood out from the patter of the rain, causing Kylo to lift his head towards the sound.

            “I’m here, sir!” The man wheezed as he slowed to a halt in front of him. “I thought I was going to be late but I’m here.” He bent over his knees to regain the breath he’d lost on his voyage.

            Kylo studied him without sympathy. If the simpleminded drug dealer would have left earlier there would have been no need to run himself ragged. “Follow me,” he said, voice distorted by the mask. He didn’t wait, he turned to the darkened alley and slipped deeper into the shadows.

            Once he was confident no prying eyes would get to witness what was about to transpire he turned towards the dealer. “I would assume you have come with the payment you owe Master Snoke.”

            “S-sir,” the man started. His bloodshot eyes were wide with fear, his dirty face void of color. “You only gave me three days to collect the debt. That isn’t enough time! An-And the one client I had died of an overdose yesterday!”

            Ren listened in a way that he knew struck the fear of God into whomever he was speaking with. It was nearly statuesque as he towered over the scumbag silently, his hands in still fists at his sides. “There is another way to pay your debt.”

            The relief on the dealer’s face was laughable. “Really? Oh that would be great. What do I need to do?”

            He moved quickly before his victim could get away. With a grip that was akin to iron, he grasped the man’s throat and he _squeezed_. “Your life is the only alternative currency Master Snoke with accept.”

            The man tried to fight him off, but his resistance was futile.

            He watched as the man’s eyes bulged out of his head, his pale face took on a blue tone. Slowly, his struggling ceased.

            Kylo didn’t release the man yet. He knew from experience that the man was just unconscious. It would take a few more minutes before the oxygen supply had been cut off long enough to kill him.

            As he pressed both thumbs directly over the drug dealer’s windpipe, he remembered the first time he’d ever killed a man. It had terrified him. He’d spent weeks hiding in his dark apartment, jumping every single time he heard a door open or a car beep outside. He spent months resisting the urge to run every time he saw a police car.

            Thanks to Snoke’s training it didn’t bother him nearly as much. He had learned to reserve a space in the back of his mind for times like this. It was a place where he could pack all of his anxiety, guilt, and self-loathing in a box. Distancing himself from his emotions made the killing much easier.

            Once the dealer had voided his bowels, Kylo knew he was dead.

            He tossed the limp body aside in disgust, pointedly not looking at the swollen and blackened face of his victim as he slipped into the shadows and disappeared.

***

            He climbed the stairs to his apartment building. It was a nice place to live that cost nearly eight hundred dollars a month. Thanks to Snoke, he lived there for free.

            He got to the front door of his apartment only to see Hux standing there, waiting for him. He was the last person that Kylo wanted to see right now. Actually, he didn’t want to see anybody. He wanted to go inside, shower off the filth from the night, and collapse on his king sized bed.

            “What do you want, Hux?” He demanded, adjusting the backpack slung over his shoulder.

            The look on Hux’s face said that he would rather be anywhere but speaking to the first knight at one-thirty in the morning. His pointed nose was scrunched in distaste as he leered at the taller man. “Perhaps this would be better discussed inside.”

            He was right. Kylo didn’t want any of his neighbors overhearing their business because they were discussing it in the hallway. With a huff, the knight unlocked his condo before gesturing for Hux to come inside.

            The red haired man’s eyes swept over the expanse of the apartment. “It’s good to see you have finally cleaned up after yourself.”

            The last time he had been at the apartment it had been torn to shreds. Kylo’s temper was awful and he often took his frustrations out on anything around him. A bad day had sent him on a frenzy that had destroyed the couch, the walls, the dining room table, the lamp in the corner, and all of the books in the bookshelf.

            With a huff the taller man tossed his black backpack on the leather couch. “Why are you here?”

            “I’m here because I must know if I need to promote another thug or if Snoke has his money. We all know that the lowest ranked members would love to get their filthy hands on this little promotion.”

            “Promote someone.”

            “Ah, so you aren’t having a very good night then.”

            “I didn’t say that. I’m saying that the dealer was unable to secure his payment by the end of the second deadline I gave him.” Second chances were rare among the First Order and third changes were unheard of.

            “Who gave you the authority to give him an extension?”

            “I did. You’re forgetting that at one point he was one of the greatest assets we had. He brought in the most money three years in a row.” The dealer he’d killed had been one of their best for a long time—longer than anybody else they’d had. However, he had gotten too full of himself and it had led to an investigation in his area. So, he had to move across the city to a place that had worse demand.

            Hux didn’t like to be chastised and that showed clearly on his face pointy face. “Do not speak down to me. I am your superior!”

            Kylo drew himself up, looming over Hux in a way that would make most men shit their pants. “You’re my superior in rank. That’s it.”

            Most of their men were terrified of the first knight, they dreaded having to meet with him. They knew that nine times out of ten meeting with him meant meeting their fates as well. They showed him respect out of fear, whereas they showed Hux respect because he knew how to control a room.

            The ginger man sneered up at him, “you don’t scare me Ren. I remember where you were just a petulant boy!”

            He didn’t want to think about his childhood, about his past. He wasn’t that kid anymore. He’d killed who he was in the past in cold blood and became a new person with a new name and a new purpose in life.

            His voice quiet but hard when he spoke. “Get out.”

            “Excuse me?”

            “You heard me. _Get out_.”

            Hux almost looked like he wanted to put up a fight, but over the years he had come to know when Ren was on the verge of exploding. He didn’t want to be anywhere near him when he did. He opened the door, “I’m sure I’ll be seeing you again soon.”

            Once the door was safely shut, he let his rage loose. He hadn’t had a tantrum in a few weeks. All of the emotions he’d been so carefully packing up in those little boxes in the back of his mind were full to the brim. They were ready to burst.

            Turning, he scooped up the lamp sitting on a stand next to the door. He threw it at the wall and it shattered in little ceramic pieces.

            It was unfulfilling, however. It only added to the muddled mess that was his emotions.

            He growl he ripped the drawer out of  the stand threw it, and proceeded to tip over the table it used to reside in. He grabbed a throw pillow off the couch and ripped it at the seams, letting the stuffing spill out of it. He knocked over the bookshelf throwing books across the room, ripping the pages out of others.

            He let all of those pent up emotions out until he was nothing but a sweaty exhausted mess on the floor of his living room. He laid there among the torn books and ripped curtains until he could breathe steadily again.

            He reveled in the exhaustion. He was too tired to be angry, too tired to feel regret for what he’d done earlier that day. He was too tired to feel much of anything.

            He half wished he could feel that way all of the time.

            He stripped on his way to the shower, letting the clothes lie where they fell. He was thirty-five stories up, nobody could peek through his windows to see him naked. And if they would happen to catch a glance of him from an adjacent building, he cared very little.

            He stepped into the shower that undoubtedly cost more than his first car. He turned on the duel showerheads and let it wash away the sweat and dirt from the night.

            When he got out, he dried himself and stared at his reflection in the steamed over mirror.

            He was tall and lean, with tattoos that spanned over his shoulders and halfway down his arms. His nose was too long and too wide. His black hair was in definite need of a trim and his large ears had been the cause of bullying when he was younger.

            The longer he stared at his reflection the more he felt self-loathing knot itself up in his gut. The more he stared into those big dark eyes he’d inherited from his mother the more he started to hate himself.

            He hated himself so much.

            He gripped the edge of the marble sink hard enough that his fingers hurt, arms shaking with the force behind it.

            He gritted his teeth, pure _hatred_ running through him.

            He knew exactly what he was doing when he cocked back a long arm and sent a fist crashing into the mirror.

            It shattered from the impact, sending shards or reflective glass into the sink and across the white tiled floor. His knuckles were dripping blood and he stared at the crimson liquid for a long silent moment before he registered the pain.

            The pain was good.

            It helped him focus.

            Barefoot and unflinching, he walked across the glass-littered floor. He cut up his feet a little, but he paid it not mind.

            He tracked bloody footprints into the bedroom. When he got there he shucked his towel and climbed into bed naked, leaving the mess. The cleaning staff Snoke generously paid would have everything repaired and in place in the morning.

 


	2. Chapter 2

           “What are you doing this weekend?”

            Rey looked up from where she was elbows deep in the guts of a rusted out station wagon. She was going to salvage whatever parts she could before they sent the car to the scrapyard for a few hundred dollars. She smiled at her boss, “I have a match tonight.”

            “But you’re free Saturday right?” Han asked her. He had that mischievous glint in his blue eyes that made her think he was up to no good.

            “Why are you asking?”

            “Well, Chewie says he knows a guy who is looking for a nice gal. He seems to think you’d make a great match.”

            “No.”

            “Why not? Give him a chance, Rey.”

            She laughed a little as she managed to yank free the carburetor with a clink. She tossed it aside and dropped it to the cement floor. “I’ve got too much going on to worry about getting dates.” _Besides_ , she added mentally, _who wants to go on a date with a girl who’s face looks like it’s been through a meat grinder?_

            Behind her Chewbacca spoke up. His accent was so thick she couldn’t clearly understand him, but she could guess from his tone that he was trying to convince her to change her mind.

            Straightening up, she pointed a crescent wrench at her tall and extremely hairy friend. “No! I’m not going on a date with some stranger. That’s just foolish!”

            He said something to her in response but she wasn’t exactly sure what he said. When her brown eyes looked to Han for some sort of confirmation the old man just pointed at his best friend, “you better watch it. I could wager that she could kick your ass. Even if you are seven feet tall.”

            She would be a liar if she said she didn’t envy the relationship Han had with Chewie. They had met years ago, back when Han used to drag race his firebird, _The Millennium Falcon_. Chewbacca, being fresh from Holland knew hardly any English and offered to help the other man on his car. They’d been inseparable ever since.

            Rey didn’t have many friends. She wasn’t good at making them and in the end it was easier to just not let people into her life instead of letting them in and watching them leave.

            A look at the analogue clock over the dirty window revealed that it was time for her to go. She still had to go home, eat something, and pack her gym bag before she went to the boxing ring. There was a lot of money riding on the match tonight. It would be nice if she could get more than just a few hundred dollars in her bank account.

            “I’m clocking out for the weekend, boys.” She informed them as she stuck the wrench in the toolbox behind her.

            Han looked up from where he was reading the paper in an abused computer chair. “What if I make you a deal?”

            She eyed him uncertainly, “What kind of deal are you talking about?”

            “If you agree to go on this date, I’ll give you a new motor for your bike. I have one sitting in shed outback that just might work.”

            It seemed like a pretty good deal. The motor on her 1968 Yamaha DT1 was missing and she couldn’t figure out why. She had a feeling that it’s nearly fifty year old motor was living up to its old age and was starting to go bad. She was dreading the day that it went. Besides, it wasn’t like she had to see this guy again. She could go out for a couple of hours and then she’d have her new motor and no attachments.

            “Fine, you have yourself a deal.”

            Chewbacca said something that sounded triumphant.

            “But don’t think that it’ll happen all of the time!”

            With that, she shrugged on her brown leather jacket and zipped it up to her chin before she put on her helmet. It took a few tries before her bike rumbled to life. Letting out a pent-up breath she let out the clutch and pulled out of the drive to Solo’s Salvage.

 

***

            She bounced from foot to foot across from her opponent. Rey’s hair was pulled back in three signature buns that was her trademark look. Some of her female followers and fans who watched underground boxing wore their hair in a similar fashion whenever Rey was fighting. She thought it was humbling to know that she had people who looked up to her.

            Her teeth bit down hard on her mouth guard as her opponent took a solid swing at her. It connected with the left side of her face, making her see stars. She was momentarily stunned before she came to her senses enough to throw up her forearms to block a procession of blows.

            She brought her knee up and wedged it into the gut of the pale haired girl across from her, sending her reeling back. Then, Rey advanced. She struck blow after blow to her rival’s face and when she moved her hands to block her face, Rey delivered a series of kicks to her gut.

            Before she could deliver a kick to the knee the bell rang. They went to their opposite corners to hydrate and get their minds right before the start of the final round.

            Sweat was dripping down Rey’s body. It soaked her tan sports bra and her brown spandex shorts. She was tired, this girl was giving her one hell of a run for her money but she couldn’t afford to lose. She had bills to pay and groceries to get.

            As much as she loved her job at the garage with Han and Chewbacca, it paid chump change compared to the money she could make at a single fight.

            Once her mouth guard was back in place she went back to the center of the ring.

            The crowd was deafening and more than likely drunk. It smelled of sweat, blood, and dozens of bodies packed close together in small quarters. The dim lighting overhead cast everything in a yellow glow.

            Rey and her opponent circled one another and the bell rang. Rey was the first one to strike, landing a solid jab to the dainty chin of the other woman. However, it was anticipated and with a solid kick to the ribs and blow to her nose sent her toppling to the mat.

            The blonde girl was on her in an instant. She delivered strike after strike to Rey’s face.

            Rey managed to roll onto her stomach to take the blows to the back of the head, but it proved to be a fruitless effort. She couldn’t stand while the other girl was on top of her.

            Her ears rang when a gloved fist struck her temple, it made her vision go fuzzy for a few breathtaking moments.

            She had to get up.

            Rey did the unthinkable. She rolled back over so her and her opponent were face to face. Blood dripped from her gushing nose and into her mouth, tasting of salty and hot. She spit some out while she wrapped her strong legs around her opponent. With a hard push, she managed to roll the other woman onto her back, flipping their positions.

            She drew back a fist and sent it crashing into the other girl’s face. She felt her nose break with a heavy crunch, accompanied by a new smear of blood on the mat. Raising her fist, she struck again and again. After the fourth blow, her opponent’s eyes rolled into the back of her head as she slipped into unconsciousness.

            Rey climbed to her feet, overcome with exhaustion while the referee counted down from ten. At the end, the bell rang, the crowd cheered, and her hand was raised in the air, declaring her victorious.

             After the fight the medic tended to her wounds, placing an adhesive strip over a gash in her tender cheek and straightening her broken nose. After dressing in the clothes she arrived in, Rey gathered her pay and headed home.

            Her apartment was small, had the occasional cockroach and mouse, and in a not so honest part of Resistance. Junkies tended to crawl out of the woodwork after the cops had patrolled the area for the day and it was the most violent part of town.

            Rey had established to her creepy neighbor from very early on that she was not to be harassed. Often when they passed one another he’d rub the hand she’d broken and mutter under his breath.

            She locked the front door behind her and dropped her blood clothes in the washing machine before getting in the shower to wash the blood off her face and soothe her aching and sore muscles.

            Bruises splotched against her ribs and one against the side of her head where the blow had nearly knocked her unconscious. The cut on her cheek was covered she couldn’t really asses it.

            Once she had washed up she slid into her pajamas and climbed into her tiny bed. She made sure the switchblade was under her pillow should somebody try to sneak in while she was asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was just a bit of an introduction into the lives of our characters! I hope you're all excited to see what I have in store for you next.


	3. Chapter 3

            Maz’s Cantina was a typical hole-in-the-wall bar. It had dingy brick walls on the outside that blended in seamlessly with the ramshackle community around it. A half-illuminated neon sign buzzed and flickered in the grimy window and the wooden sign hanging above the door creaked and groaned with every strong gust of wind. There was hardly a passerby to be seen.

            The inside, however, was full of life. Loud music played from an ancient jukebox in the corner while huge men with beards twice as long as Rey’s hair squabbled over the pool table, smoking cigarettes wiggling between their teeth. Men and women of various shapes, sizes, and financial stabilities crowded around tables and booths while people sat shoulder to shoulder at the polished bar.

            A bell sounded overhead when Rey pushed open the door.

            “Remember, kid, don’t stare.” Han Solo told her under his breath as he walked in right on her heels.

            Most paid them no mind as they tried to slink through the crowd to find a vacant booth, but Rey couldn’t help but get the feeling that Han was trying to avoid speaking to any of the patrons. The older man kept looking over his shoulder, blue eyes anxiously darting from face to face.

            At the bar a short woman practically had to stand on her tiptoes to place a tray of empty glasses on its polished surface. Rey and her companions had nearly made it halfway across the bar when she whirled around and spotted them through her thick coke-bottle glasses. Her tiny chest heaved as she sucked in a breath and then her voice was booming across the bar, “ _HAAAAAAN SOLO_!”

            Rey froze in her tracks, aware that just about every eye in the bar was on them. She could sense Han’s discomfort as the tiny woman headed towards them.

            “I haven’t seen you in here in years!”

            “Yeah,” the older man stuck his hands in the pocket of his jeans and shifted a little uneasily. “I figured I’d stay clear after the last time.”

            She waved a wrinkled hand in his direction, “most of them don’t come in here anymore. I have a feeling you’ll be safe tonight.” Her brown magnified eyes swung past Rey and up, and up, and up, until they were stopped at Chewie’s bearded face. “There is my boyfriend! I haven’t seen you in ages!”

            Chewbacca took her small hand in his before bending down to kiss it. He said something Rey didn’t understand that sent the old woman into a bashful laugh. “Stop it, you flatter me.” She dropped his hand and turned to look at Rey. She squinted at her in a way that made Rey feel like this complete stranger knew every dark and dirty secret she ever had. “Who are you?”

            “Rey.”

            She looked her over from head to toe once again seemingly satisfied with what she saw because she turned around and flagged down a waitress who wore a t-shirt that was two sizes too small for her. “Get an appetizer selection back to the kitchen. Have it delivered to the corner booth in the back.”

            “Maz, you didn’t have to do that!” Han objected.

            “Nonsense. You know I enjoy spoiling my favorite customers.”

            The slid into a booth in the back, Rey chose to sit on the end so she could slide over when her “date” arrived.

            She wasn’t looking forward to meeting the man she knew nothing about, but it was the price she had to pay to get a new engine for her motorcycle.

            While Han and Chewie talked with Maz she focused on eating the horrible fried food that was laid out before her and sipping at a cocktail that she was too young for.

            She had woken up that day with a dark bruise blossoming under the butterfly bandage that had been placed on her cheek. Her nose was still slightly swollen and tender from her fight. But she had won, she had earned five thousand dollars. She was going to drop it in her bank account as soon as she could.

            She was going to get out of Resistance some day. There was nothing for her in this city among the gangs and the drug dealers.

            Rey looked up as a heavy man waddled his way towards their table. He was nearly as wide as he was tall, and he wasn’t a short man. His nose was flat and wide, his eyes were narrow and deeply set into his head. As soon as those eyes spotted Chewbacca he made his way towards them. “Chewbacca, my old friend! How are you?”

            Chewbacca answered him with a handshake and something spoke too quickly for her to catch.

            “You must be Rey,” the big man said. He wedged himself on the seat next to her.

            She tried not to cringe as the smell of body odor reached her nostrils and this close she could see a dirt ring around the stranger’s thick neck.

            “This is our buddy Unkar Plutt.” Han didn’t look very comfortable as he introduced her to the newcomer. “Apparently, he is the date Chewie set you up with.”

            Rey noticed the tension in his words as he spoke. He hadn’t known that this had been her suitor. “It’s nice to meet you,” she told Plutt courteously.

            Rey occupied herself with her straw and her drink, only speaking to her so-called “date” when he spoke to her. It was obvious that he was rude, painfully single, and desperate. He kept hitting her shoulder with a meaty hand and saying, “isn’t that right sweetheart?” to which she would kindly answer, “um, yes”.

            It was miserable. She promised herself that she was never going to let her coworkers set up another date for her _ever_ again.

            “What did you do to your pretty little face?”

            Blinking she looked up from her half-drank cocktail to the looming man beside her. “Oh,” she said, “I’m a boxer. It happened at a fight.”

            If it were possible, Plutt slid even closer to her. He put a heavy arm over her small shoulders and patted her.

            The action made her grit her teeth. She wasn’t a dog!

            “I like a girl that has a bit of fight in her.”

            She thought she could toughen out one date for the sake of her friends but when those words tumbled from his thin lips she realized she couldn’t take it anymore. “Excuse me. I-I need to use the restroom.”

            Once she was free from the table she made a break for the bathroom.

            The restroom at Maz’s was in just about the same condition as the rest of the bar. It had seen better days and less abuse, but it would suffice to get her away from that gluttonous pile of shit that sat at the table waiting for her to come back.

            Splashing her bruised face with water she decided that she wasn’t going to sit with them. She was going to apologize for not feeling well and she was going to go home. A motor wasn’t worth the aggravation. She would buy one once she saved enough money.

            She left the restroom once she felt cooled down enough to announce her departure.

            “I’m not feeling all that well,” she mumbled to their table when she returned. She grabbed her leather jacket and shrugged it on. “I’m going to head home and get some rest.”

            It was obvious that Han expected something to that effect when she spoke. He raised a hand in a wave, “I’ll see you at work on Monday, kid.”

            She was struck by sudden relief when she realized he was going to try and argue with her on staying. She hastily bid her farewells and headed out the door.

            Her bike was parked further down the street than the _Falcon_ was, but she didn’t mind the walk. It gave her time to clear her head before she headed back home.

            “You’re not leaving already?” Plutt called after her as he laboriously made his way down the sidewalk in her direction.

            Rey swore under her breath before turning around to face him. “I’m sorry. My head hurts an awful lot. I think it’s a lingering effect from my fight last night.”

            “Why don’t I drive you?” He offered, “my car is just around the corner.”

            “No thank you.”

            That was when he grabbed her arm tight enough to make her wince. “I said, _let me give you a ride home_.”

            She tried to wrench her arm free, but his entire hand easily wrapped around her bicep. “I said _no_!”

            He was too strong for her break free and there was no way she would be able to win if it became physical. He started to drag her down the dark sidewalk.

            “Let go of me! I said no!”

            He ignored her.

            Anger pulsed through her, igniting her very core. With her free hand, she sent a fist colliding against his flat ugly face.

            It made Plutt stutter to a halt. It didn’t seem to faze him except to make him pause in shock. He stared at her, shock registering in his expression. So, Rey cocked back and hit him again.

            “Let go of me!”

            “I believe the lady told you to let her go,” a dark voice said.

            It was obvious that she was just as surprised as her attacker because both of their heads snapped to the direction of the voice. She couldn’t get a clear look of the newcomer because her assailant was so big he blocked him.

            “What are you going to do about it twig-boy?” Plutt demanded, his tone chastising and full of humor.

            Whoever it was didn’t dignify his question with a verbal response. Instead, he grabbed Plutt’s free arm and twisted it until a reverberating crack was heard in the nighttime air.

            It was a sound Rey was familiar with and it made her wince in sympathy; it had been the sound of a bone breaking.

            The rotund man let out a howl and released her arm. He cradled his injured arm close to his chest.

            “When I say _no_ I mean it!” She exclaimed before delivering a kick to his gut out of pure frustration.

            Plutt got the hint because when he could finally breathe again he lumbered away as quickly as his jiggly legs could take him.

            She was left standing on the street with the stranger that had helped her. She turned towards him, eyes raking him up from head to toe. The stranger was tall and thin, a black hoodie covering his head and the upper part of his face. His arms hung at his sides, fingers twitching almost absentmindedly.

           “Thank you,” she said.

            He looked at her, she could feel his gaze checking her over just as she had him. He lingered over the bruises on her face and he moved closer now.

            He was so close to her that Rey could smell his cologne. She could see under the hood and his face was narrow, his nose was long, and his ears large, but he was handsome. His dark eyes didn’t leave her face as he brought a gentle hand to her ruined cheek. “Did he do this to you?”

            She could sense the rage simmering just beneath the surface of his touch, scarcely detectable in his words. Something told her that he was dangerous, that he shouldn’t be underestimated. She knew from a single touch that he could kill her if he really wanted to.

            “No,” she said quietly. “No, he didn’t. That was from…from something else.”

            She didn’t speak openly about her boxing career. It was very illegal and she didn’t want to go to prison for it.

            It didn’t seem to ease his mind.

            “I…I’m a boxer.”

            The anger was replaced with something different now. His eyes were no longer hard with anger but soft with curiosity and amusement. “I noticed you had a nice hook.”

            “Thanks.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for all of the wonderful responses to my first couple of chapters! I'm going to make an attempt (seriously, I'm a full time student and have a part time job so my posting might not be on schedule all of the time) to post once a week on either Thursdays or Fridays!
> 
> Once again, I apologize if anybody seems out of character. All of the mistakes are mine and mine alone. I hope you all enjoyed chapter three!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to warn you all before hand that this is just a smut chapter. If you're not into that you can skip it because it isn't crucial to the plot. 
> 
> It seemed kind of early in the plot for smut (to me anyways) but the way I look at it is that Rey knows what she wants and she'll do what she pleases with whom she pleases. 
> 
> Also, I feel like I'm not that great at it. So, any kind of advice would be appreciated or constructive criticism. This is the first chapter of smut I've ever published, so please be kind.

            There was something about this girl that drew him to her like a moth to a flame. Kylo knew he should have turned the other way and left her to sort out her problems on her own. He couldn’t afford to get attached to anyone. It was too dangerous.

            Still, she was so small and she had been fighting against that glutton so hard…there had been a feeling in his gut that if he hadn’t helped her something terrible was going to happen to her. He'd learned long ago through trial and error to listen to those instincts.

            Now, as he stared down at her with her shy crooked smile and her passionate eyes he realized that if it had been a man of typical stature trying to take advantage of her, he wouldn’t have stood a chance.

            What did he do now? Did he just leave her there? He knew from experience the kind of filth that roamed these very streets at night. He _was_ part of that filth. Despite the fact that he knew she could take care of herself Kylo felt as though he had an obligation to see to it that she got home safely.

            “Do you mind if I walk you to your car?” He asked.

            She seemed pleasantly surprised at the offer at first, but her face quickly shifted to a look of suspicion.

            “You can knock me out if I try anything.”

            “Okay, fine. My bike is over there.”

            He walked beside her, ensuring that he kept his head down. The last thing he wanted was to draw attention to himself. People like him didn’t stay alive by making noise and his incident with the fat man had undoubtedly drawn some sort of unwanted attention.

            She didn’t speak while they trekked to her bike, but she did keep glancing at him through her dark lashes in an almost endearingly bashful way.

            “Thank you,” she said once they arrived. Her small fingers played with the zipper on her worn out leather jacket.

            “You’re welcome.” Kylo studied her one last time before turning to leave.

            “Wait! That’s it?”

            He was stunned into turning back around to look at her. He had done as he’d promised and ensured she had gotten to her vehicle safely. What more did she expect of him? He didn’t have a car of his own. He couldn’t give her a ride back to her home.

            “Excuse me?”

            “You…you are really going to just leave me here?”

            “What else am I going to do?”

            “Doesn’t the hero always sweep the girl off of her feet before whisking her off into the sunset for a night of passion in each other’s arms?”

            He didn’t know how to react to that. This wasn’t a fairytale, if anything it was a horror movie where he was trapped into being the bad guy until he met his demise at the hands of a true white night.

            Then the irony of what she said hit him. He couldn’t help it that his lips turned up into a twitch of a self-depreciating grin. She called him a hero. He was far from it. He’d murdered so many people he lost count. Men pissed themselves when they learned they had acquired an appointment with the First Knight.

            “You have it all wrong. I am no hero.”

            She bit her lower lip, peering up at him with a fire in her brown eyes. She was trying to keep her battered freckled face impassive but he could tell when a woman desired him. She was leaning closer and closer to him. She was so close he could smell the cigarette smoke in her hair and a faint trace of alcohol on her breath.

            He swallowed, licking his dry lips as he stood perfectly still. Before he knew it she pounced on him.

            Their lips met with a clack of teeth that was interrupted with hurried swipes of tongue. The strange girl pressed herself against him as if she couldn’t get enough contact.

            Kylo’s brain short-circuited. He hadn’t been kissed like this in a very long time. Hell, he couldn't remember the last time he'd been intimate with a woman he hadn't paid for. This was a different experience entirely; this girl _wanted_ him.

            Her hands were rough against his cheek when she dragged her palm across it, her lips were slightly chapped but were still soft in comparison to his, and the gasps she made between the heated kisses sent all of the blood from his head straight to his dick.

            His hands moved to their own accord as they slid down to grab her ass in the skinny jeans she wore. The result was her hips grinding against him in just the right place and he couldn't help but grunt out quiet moan.

            “Take me home,” she breathed.

            He didn’t think about it, he just acted. He climbed onto her bike and fired it up. She climbed on behind him, cinching her wiry arms around his waist. Then he was speeding down the street leaving his reservations back on the sidewalk.

            The ride to his condo had been hell. She was sitting behind him, rubbing him through his jeans every so often just to ensure he was still interested.

            He slammed the door hard enough to rattle the new lamp on the stand by the door. He turned around to face her, picking her up and pressing her back against the wall.

            The pleased gasp she made sent a jolt of pleasure right through him. There was something so…pleasing about getting that simple sound out of her.

            He rutted against her, lips moving to gently trace her jaw and neck.

            “Rey,” she panted.

            He paused, lifting his head to look at her. “What?”

            “My name is Rey.”

            “Kylo.” Almost immediately he felt like a fool. He had let this girl convince him to take her to his home and he had never bothered to ask her what her name was. He wanted to curse himself, but Rey didn’t give him the chance.

            Her strong hands gripped his chin and drug his mouth back to hers where it belonged.

            They kissed the entire way to the bedroom. Carrying her took almost no effort. She weighed less than one hundred and twenty pounds. He’d dragged bodies that were twice her weight.

            He set her on the floor and she quickly took to stripping herself of her clothing. He did the same.

            Once they were down to just their underwear, laid back on the bed. She stared up at him with a sultry look in her eye, fingers trailing over the tan and muscled expanse of skin between her lacy bra and underwear. “Are you going to stare at me all night or are you going to do something useful?”

            She was bold. He liked it.

            Kylo crawled on the bed, his knees on either side of her lithe body. He craned his head to kiss her, his hard member brushing against her thigh every time he rolled his hips against her. His lips and teeth skimmed her neck and her collarbone, hands finding the lace of her bra and giving it a few firm squeezes.

            She swore under her breath and pushed him away.

            Kylo sat up, confused. Had he done something wrong to make her change her mind? No, he realized as her fingers slid to her back, she was taking off her bra. Once that was off her panties soon followed.

            When Rey crooked a finger at him, beckoning him to come back to her, he did so like his life depended on it.

            His fingers found one of her nipples, thumb circling it until it was hard and straining against his fingers. His lips latched around it while one of his hands drifted down her body to rest on her sex.

            It wasn’t shaved, like some of the whores he’d hired, but he didn’t mind. He knew he didn’t shave his nether regions very often because he hated that it itched like hell. He could imagine it was the same for women too.

            One of his long fingers dipped down between her folds, enveloped by wet warmth.

            She tugged on his dark hair, forcing him to lift his head so she could latch their lips together. While they nipped at one another’s bottom lips he eased his finger inside of her.

            Rey arched her back and groaned into his mouth and he let out a stuttered breath. She was so hot and so ready for him.

            He moved his finger in and out of her, basking in the sounds she made. Just when he thought they couldn’t get any better, he inserted his second finger.

            She was no longer letting out small gasps of pleasure, but breathy moans as she planted her feet and raised her hips. “More,” she begged. “Please, I need more!”

            He obliged, increasing the pace.

            He was so hard now he felt that having his dick torn off by a rabid dog would hurt less. Still, he wasn’t about to fuck her until she was good and ready.

            She alerted him to her readiness by reaching down and taking his hand in hers. The two fingers that had been slick and wet from being inside her found their way into her mouth.

            It took him a moment to remember how to breathe. He’d never seen something more erotic than a woman—this woman—tasting herself off his fingers. Then, he wondered what it would feel like to have those lips wrapped around his cock.

            He shuddered.

            Rey released his hand and while he stepped out of his boxers and produced a condom from his bedside stand, he felt her ogling him.

            He was well-endowed and he knew it. He’d been told by several partners that he’d had (although he wasn’t sure whether or not they were saying that because he paid them for their services or if they had actually meant it).

            He lined up with her entrance and eased himself in.

            She let out a drawn out keen as he did so.

            For a fraction of a minute, Kylo forgot how to breathe. She was so hot and wet squeezing around him that if she had asked him his name he wouldn't have possessed the ability to answer.

            “Will you move already?”

            She was impatient and it made him want to draw it out even longer, to frustrate her, to make her beg for it. He couldn’t do that. He didn’t think he had the stamina to do so. It had been months since he had last gotten laid and it would be over far too quickly if he tried.

            So, he obliged.

            For a long time there was nothing but the sounds of their labored breathing and pleasured moans.

            He leaned over her, panting, placing kisses on her hot skin. He sucked a bruise on her clavicle and she bit his lip hard enough he could taste blood.

            The closer he got to the edge so did Rey. He could tell by the way her gasps and pants increased in frequency and how she would throw back her head in ecstasy every so often. She arched her hips trying to get him at a different angle. When it didn’t do the job she cracked open an eye in frustration and looked at him. “Stop.”

            It killed him. He wanted to say no. He wanted to keep going and get off, damn what she wanted. Kylo had to remind himself that this wasn’t some hooker he’d hired to get the job done. This was a person who had wanted him before he’d wanted her. This was somebody who was doing this because she wanted to get off just as badly as he did. So, he forced himself to stop.

            She untangled herself from him and pushed him down on the bed. “It’s my turn.”

            He laid down and watched as she straddled him. His hands flew to her hips as she eased herself onto him. He threw his head back against his pillows and let out a long contented sigh.

            _Then_ she all but went feral on him. Rey rode him with such a ferocity that he could scarcely keep up. “I—I, uh, I’m not going to last if you keep doing that!”

            “Don’t,” was her cheeky reply.

            Her hand trailed down her body, squeezing at her breasts for show until her middle finger pressed against her clit. She didn’t stop bouncing against him as she threw her head back, a series of gasping moans slipping from between her teeth.

            He felt her tighten around him, shuddering as she rode him through her climax. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, her face flushed, brown hair cascading down her back as she threw her head back in pleasure. He wanted to relive that moment forever.

            She rocked herself against him, hands holding his in place over her hips.

            He came not long after she did.

            Once they finished, he stripped off the condom and tossed it in the wastebasket by the bed. He slung a long arm over her soft and sweaty skin before they flopped against the messy sheets together.

            It was the best sleep he’d gotten in months.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your words of encouragement and enthusiasm for this story! Once again, all mistakes are my own!

            He was shocked when he didn’t wake up alone the next morning. In fact, he was so shocked to see Hux standing at the end of his bed that he’d snatched the gun off the night stand and had it aimed before he realized he’d even sat up.

            “Please shoot me, Ren. You would be doing me a favor.” He stood there silently with a red brow cocked expectantly. He even seemed a little disappointed when Kylo didn’t send a round through his smug face.

            The startled man pushed his black hair out of his eyes, looking around the room to see if Rey was still there. She was gone. He imagined that she had left hours before Hux’s arrival. He slammed the pistol back onto the night stand. “Do you ever knock?”

            “What would be the point of having a spare key if I knocked?”

            “What are you doing here?” There was a nauseous feeling in his gut that made him suspect he knew exactly why Hux was there. Hux liked to deliver bad news in person and Kylo had the feeling it was because he liked to see the First Knight's reaction.

            “Snoke wants to meet with us. Seeing how you don’t have a car and he doesn’t like to be kept waiting, I will be the one to drive you there.”

            Being trapped in a car with Hux for fifteen minutes—or any amount of time, really—wasn’t exactly what he liked to do the morning after having sex with a beautiful woman.

            “He wants us to be there in thirty minutes.”

            Snoke said his face betrayed him often and he knew his master was right. So, Kylo was careful to keep his face passive so it didn’t give away the fact that he was far from pleased to meet with his boss.

            He climbed out of bed, ignoring Hux’s grumbling. “You know I sleep naked,”

            The red haired man made a hasty exit, claiming to be waiting in the living room.

            He dressed quickly in black clothes and grabbed his backpack off the couch. He didn't even look at Hux when he said, “Let’s go.”

***

            His heart was going to burst out of his chest, his palms sweating in his black leather gloves clenched at his sides. He hated the ball of nerves squirming in his gut and his tongue felt like sandpaper in his mouth.

            Under the watchful eye of Snoke, however, he didn’t dare let any signs of his anxiety show. Snoke hated weakness and would quickly squelch any sign of it in his apprentice.

            “Do you know why I summoned you here today?” Snoke asked, his beady eyes staring right through Kylo’s mask as if he could see his face.

            Neither he nor Hux dared move.

            The silence in the spacious office lingered until he spoke again. “The police are getting more and more suspicious. They’re getting bolder.”

            He considered his master’s words with silently. Now that it had been brought to his attention, he realized, he had been seeing police patrolling the rougher areas of Resistance...the ones the Order controlled.

            They hadn’t tried to arrest anyone significant, just an occasional possession charge from the clients that bought their drugs from the gang. Still, he had the feeling that they cops were searching for the drug lord…Master Snoke. It was Kylo’s job to ensure that he wasn’t caught.

            “What do you suggest we do, Master?” He asked. His mask disguised the tones of his voice well. Anybody but Snoke wouldn’t have sensed his deepening anxiety.

            At the question, the bald man sat up a little straighter in his leather office chair. He leaned towards Ren, his eyes sweeping over the First Knight’s towering form.

            He may as well have been stark naked for all the more exposed he felt under that narrow-eyed gaze. In response, he clenched his teeth hard enough to make his temples hurt and squeezed his balled up fists shut even further. He couldn’t fidget. He didn’t want to go through training today.

            “What is your job, Ren?” The man demanded, his voice low and dangerous.

            He swallowed, feeling like he was being choked. He had a hard time answering around the massive lump stuck in his throat but he knew with each precious millisecond that passed his master was doubting his strength. “My job is to keep you protect at all times, Master.”

            Satisfied, he eased back into the polished leather of his chair. He gestured at Hux with a long-fingered hand, “you’re fantastic at coming up with ideas. What do you suggest we do?”

            The red haired man straightened, arms firmly crossed behind his back. Kylo knew the other man positively _thrived_ on being in the spotlight. He was practically purring in his long pea coat. “We’ll find the snitches and kill them. Then, Phasma and I will meet with the dealers and make it perfectly clear that any sign of treason will not be tolerated. If we must, we’ll send them to meet with the knights.”

            This answer pleased the drug lord because he gave a haunting smile to the pair of men standing before him. Seeing him do so was a rare occurrence and it chilled Kylo to his core every single time. The man was missing a couple of teeth, the rest were stained from years of abuse, the points of his cheeks jutted out in a nearly inhuman way.

            “Get it done.”

            “Yes, sir.”

            “You’re dismissed, Hux.”

            Those three words sucked the air out of Kylo's lungs. He always found it peculiar that something so small as a few murmured words could have such a drastic effect on him.

            He drew himself up even straighter, mentally preparing himself for whatever his master had to say. He took a moment to pack of his anxiety and fear away in the boxes in the back of his mind. Whatever Snoke had to say was important. He would need to pay very close attention without his emotions getting in the way. 

            “When was the last time we’ve trained?”

            “Several weeks ago, sir.”

            “Have you been staying focused?”

            For the most part, the answer was yes. He hadn’t been sidetracked by his emotions or his wants. He’d carried out the tasks appointed to him emotionlessly and swiftly. Last night, however…

            Sleeping with Rey may have been a mistake. Something about the way she had ran her fingers through his hair while she’d arched her back to give him a better angle and the way she’d sighed in pleasure had almost been _passionate_.

            On his ride over to Snoke’s office he’d tried to convince himself that it had been nothing but meaningless sex. He’d failed. He’d had meaningless sex dozens of times but something about that scrappy girl was different. He felt a though he had a connection with her.

            He couldn’t afford connections.

            Snoke’s voice brought him back to the dusty and cramped office. “I asked you,” Snoke said as he rose to his feet, “ _have you been staying focused_?”

            “Yes, sir.”

            To most people, somebody as slight in stature as Snoke wasn’t intimidating. However, Kylo knew from experience the real strength and power Snoke possessed. He knew firsthand the kind of pain the slender man could inflict.

            “You can’t afford any distractions. Do I need to remind you of your duties?”

            “No, sir.”

            “We will be continuing your training soon. You’re dismissed, Ren.”

            Relief had never felt so sweet. He departed with a respectful bow and let the heavy groaning door of Snoke’s office click shut.

            He wanted nothing more than to take off his mask and suck down a few gallons of water, but with two of Phasma’s men guarding the door he didn’t dare remove his helm. In the business of murder nobody was your friend and everyone was waiting for the right opportunity to jam a blade in your back.

            There was something satisfying to watch about the way the two of them shifted uneasily when he turned his masked gaze on them. It was as if they were waiting for him to kill them. “Tell any of the knights you see to meet me in the training gym in two days at three in the morning. They know the consequences if they’re late.”

            "Yes, sir."

            He left them standing nervously by the door.

            As he strode down the groaning, ancient stairs he realized that he felt the most powerful when he was striking the fear into the hearts of men and women alike. With a sickening twist in his gut he realized that perhaps he and Snoke weren’t so different after all.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is basically the same as the previous one. It's just to give you readers a taste of Rey's life and where she's come from.

_The taste of blood in her mouth was salty in and bitter. Every time she sucked in a breath she felt as if she were being stabbed under her ribs._

_Rey attempted to block a jab to her nose and hardly succeeded. The glancing blow stunned her long enough for her assailant to knock her down with a harsh kick to the knee._

_She hit the mat hard enough to see stars and as the referee counted down from ten, she couldn’t find the strength or the willpower to get up and keep fighting._

_As her opponent was declared the winner, she felt like a fool. What had made her think she would be any good at boxing? She’d done no training except running and some mild weight lifting. She was fighting with a pair of gloves she’d picked up at a rummage sale for five dollars. Not to mention, she’d spent three hundred dollars trying to get into a fight and had lost it all._

_It had been humiliating to climb back onto her bike, body aching and throbbing, and begin to journey back to her scanty apartment that was sixty miles away. At least she’d been defeated somewhere far from home._

_Roughly forty miles closer to home, she rode upon a diner with a flickering neon sign. It looked like its health certificate should have been revoked ten years ago. With her stomach growling, she decided that getting sick from eating a bad omelet wouldn’t be the worst thing that would happen to her that night._

_She slid into a booth, holding her aching ribs as she did so. She stared at the outdated menu, searching for something to eat._

_“What can I get you, hun?” The waitress asked, a hand on her hip._

_Rey looked up at the sound of her voice, “coffee.”_

_The woman nodded and headed off. Perhaps she had looked happier at the beginning of her shift and the stress of the hours she worked had gotten to her, she thought._

_A man sitting at the counter turned to look over his shoulder at the sound of her voice. His eyes locked on hers briefly before he looked away._

_Even as Rey stirred too much sugar in her coffee and waited for her scrambled eggs she caught glimpses of the older man looking at her again and again._

_Finally, after nearly twenty minutes of the stolen glances, the man hopped off his stool and slid into the booth across from her._

_Rey swallowed the egg that mysteriously had lodged itself in her throat. “Can I help you?” She asked around her swollen lip._

_The man leaned forward, his face seemed wiser beyond his years. His eyes studied her bruising face, pausing on her split lip and the way her arm caressed her injured ribs. After a long silence he asked, “how much?”_

_She sat up straighter, a frown creasing her brow. “ **Excuse me**?” _

_“How much did you lose in the fight tonight?”_

_She was more than relieved that he wasn’t asking if she was a prostitute and she relaxed, stabbing some scrambled eggs with her fork. “Three hundred dollars. It was my first one. I’m going to get better.”_

_“Maybe.”_

_“You don’t think I can do better?”_

_“Not on your own. You need a coach, somebody who knows what they’re talking about. You need someone to help you. There’s more to boxing than staying fit.”_

_“I don’t have one.”_

_He raised a snaggled grey eyebrow at her and leaned closer to her once again. “Would you like one?”_

_She busied herself by taking a sip of her coffee. In all honesty, she couldn’t afford a coach. She was just starting out at Solo Salvage and was making minimum wage while working full time hours. “I can’t afford one.”_

_He considered her words carefully before saying, “I’ll do it for free.”_

_“What do you know about boxing?”_

_“More than you’d think.”_

***

            “You’re distracted!” Lucas’ voice boomed across the cold and spacious gym. He glared at her, scraggly brows pulled down low over his eyes. He waved the impact mitt around and then shrugged, “you’ve got an extremely tough match against Tala Stormway this coming weekend and you’re going to lose if you don’t focus.”

            Rey stood up straight and brushed a stray strand of hair out of her face. “Sorry, sir. I’ll pay attention.”

            “You can talk to me about whatever is distracting you.”

            Typically, she wouldn’t mind confiding in her coach about her personal problems. He was a wonderful listener and his advice was often wise and insightful, but there was something that seemed wrong about talking to him about her sex life.

            She’d woken up under Kylo’s expensive sheets sometime around six in the morning. Silently, she’d slid from the bed and collected her undergarments. As she pulled on her panties she’d seen a pistol resting on his nightstand, like it belonged there.

            Seeing the slick black metal of the lethal weapon had sent a chill down her spine. So, without waking him she’d hastily dressed and slipped out of his condominium. She passed no one on the way out except for a thin red haired man ascending the stairs past her; he hadn’t even given her a second look.

            “Let’s go again,” her coach instructed, “watch your left side. You leave it too vulnerable.”

            Rey raised her gloves in front of her face and shifted her weight from foot to foot. She struck the mitt again and again. After the second round of a dozen hits, Lucas lunged for her and cracked her hard in the left side of her body.

            It hadn’t hurt because he’d struck her with the mitt, but her face flushed from the embarrassment.

            “I’m sorry I just can’t—”

            “Sprint the block,” he said with a wave of his arm. “Maybe that will help you focus. I’m timing you.”

            She didn’t have time to hesitate, knowing that with Lucas every second counted. Rey dropped her gloves to the mat and dashed up the stairs and out the gym’s front door.

            The distraction of the sprint was a welcome one. It would give her time refocus her attention on what mattered. Boxing mattered. Making extra money mattered. Thinking about a one night stand didn’t matter.

            She kept telling herself that as she forced her legs to their maximum pace as she sprinted down the sidewalk. Still, she couldn’t get Kylo off her mind.

            There was something dark and dangerous lurking just beneath the calm exterior he’d demonstrated within the few hours they’d shared together. She felt as if there was something absolutely predatory about his actions.

            She kept thinking about the way he’d handled the situation with Plutt. He’d idled up to the fat man as if he was stalking prey, as if he knew he would be able to hurt him if it had come to blows. It was scary and attractive at the same time.

            Not only was his suave actions attractive, but he wasn’t hard to look at either. His feathery black hair seemed to perfectly frame his narrow face, his skin was delicately inked, and his lips had been full and soft.

            Not to mention the fact that he was very skilled in bed.

            As she turned the corner, she passed two men exchanging money. She had no doubts in her mind that they were doing a drug deal, but she paid them no attention. She didn’t need to get into another skirmish on the street over something that was no concern of hers.

            She was dripping with sweat from exercise and the heat of the day by the time she got back to the gym. She leaned forward, panting as Lucas studied the time on his stopwatch. “Well?” She finally demanded.

            “Better.”

            She had just enough time to guzzle some water before he stood in front of her, mitt raised. “Let’s go again.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a back-to-back double feature! I felt awful for leaving two horrible chapters in a row, so to make up for it and to make this fic worth reading today I decided to add two chapters in one day! I actually like this chapter a lot, mostly because it furthers the plot along. I hope you enjoy!

            Destiny was working against her, Rey decided as she took a solid knee to the gut.

            She had showed up to a boxing arena on the south side of town (that was hidden within the remains of a gutted flour processing factory that had been out of business for nearly two decades) and had absolutely been floored by the amount of spectators surrounding the ring. It was the biggest turn out for a fight she’d ever seen!

            Then, when she got in the locker room and started to change into her clothes she learned that her opponent was one of the toughest in the region. She would have to be at her very best to win. Stories had trickled down the brackets that she was undefeated in the season thus far.

            The rumors must have been true. She was ruthless and Rey was certain she had more bruises on her skin than freckles by the end of the third round.

            Gasping for breath, a gloved hand pressing against her ribs as she staggered to her corner.

            The corner was devoid of a coach, Lucas didn’t like to leave his small corner of the world. Under normal circumstances Rey didn’t mind, but she was being murdered in the ring and felt as though she needed guidance.

            She turned away from her opponent to reach for her water bottle, but when she did something in the far back corner of the factory floor caught her eye.

            A tall man dressed in black from head to toe stood with his back to the ring. The way he stood was predatory and threatening, as though he was looming over someone.

            Her gut knotted with unease, but she pushed it from her mind.

            She only spared him a second glance trying to pinpoint any distinguishing features, but it was impossible. His hood was up and his back to her, nothing stood out except for the way he carried himself.

            “Back in the ring!” The referee barked.

            Rey met her opponent back in the center of the ring and at the sound of the bell, the fight started again.

            She had tried to move quickly to catch her opponent off guard, but it didn’t work. Whatever hit she landed had minimal impact because the opposing woman was fast.

            Rey groaned in pain as a jab to her left kidney forced the air out of her lungs.

            She was losing abysmally and wished her coach would make an appearance, even if it was in the form of a hallucination.

            The thought of her coach appearing out of thin air was amusing, especially if she continued to suffer blows to the head.

            Rey’s vision blurred, her ears rang, and for a moment she had forgotten where she was. The solid impact of the glove against her face sent her stumbling backwards a step or two.

            She was exhausted, beat up, and her fighting was getting sloppy. She knew she was a goner the second her opponent’s foot connected with her knee.

            Unfortunately, Rey was no stranger to the mat’s slightly cushioned surface. As she lay sprawled on the floor she found herself staring at that figure in the back of the room once again.

            The crowd’s cheering was deafening, the referee’s count to ten was muffled in the back of her mind, and she watched as the man in black reached out with gloved hands and caressed the head of the man before him.

            She thought the way he was touching him was intimate...until with a practiced twist he snapped the shorter man’s neck and let him drop to the floor.

            Rey had been so intensely focused on what had been going on in the back of the room that she hadn’t realized what had transpired merely ten feet away from her face. The crowd wasn’t cheering with bloodlust anymore, they were scrambling to leave the factory as fast as they could.

            “Police!” A black-skinned young man exclaimed, gun raised. “Everybody freeze!”

            Everything was a blur as she forced herself to her feet. She couldn’t get arrested! She couldn’t afford the fines.

            Her opponent jumped out of the ring and vanished into the crowd, the referee not far behind her.

            So, Rey slipped between the ropes and tried to get lost in the crowd.

            Everybody was pushing and shoving in their attempts to elude the police. They didn’t seem to mind—or care—that they were practically trampling other human beings in the process. It was a flurry of elbows, thrashing limbs, and panicked voices.

            “Freeze!” A loud voice shouted, just feet from her.

            Rey whirled to face the man on instinct.

            He lunged.

            She cocked back a fist and punched him right in the eye.

            The cop was startled, his face twisting up in shock as he staggered a step or two back before landing on his ass.

            She didn’t wait to see if he got up. She was going to get the hell out of there before another policeman showed up.

            Unfortunately, she didn’t get very far. With her head throbbing due to a possible concussion and the turmoil of the crowd she quickly forgot which direction the door was.

            Then, she was hit from behind by someone strong and determined. She couldn’t help but crash to the dingy floor. The concrete stung her palms and tore her knee to bloody shreds. “Get the hell off of me!” She snarled.

            “You have the right to remain silent,” a voice with a slight Spanish accent informed her.

            Rey groaned in defeat and let him cuff her hands behind her back. She was too exhausted and too beat up to resist arrest.

***

            She sat across from the two officers that had busted the boxing match in nothing but her sports bra and shorts. Bruises were starting to blossom on her skin, the blood from her split lip had dried an hour ago, and she was nearly shivering in her chair.

            “Do you know why you’re here?” The man who had introduced himself as Officer Poe Dameron asked.

            “No when there is a man who killed somebody still skulking around,” she sniped.

            There was a fleeting moment where this news seemed to shock him. His dark eyes widened just a fraction before he was recomposing himself. “You’re going to be facing some serious penalties for your actions.”

            “Like what?”

            The dark skinned man named Officer Finn shifted the bag of ice that had been on his face. The eye Rey had hit was half-swelled shut and he looked more than annoyed with her. “Felony assault on an officer, participating in highly illegal activities, and resisting arrest. You’re facing potential jail time.”

            Hearing the list of charges against her was unsettling. She shivered in her chair, whether it was from the cold or from her nerves she wasn’t entirely sure.

            “You’re a young girl. What were you doing in a place like that?”

            “Trying to make some extra money.”

            “By fighting?”

            She sat up a little straighter, scowling at him. “It’s better than the way most girls my age make money. I’m not getting paid to spread my legs, I’m just fighting and getting my cut of the bet.”

            A tap sounded on the mirror behind her, confirming her suspicions that it was a two-way.

            Dameron got up and left the room.

            Minutes of silence stretched between her and the officer that remained in the interrogation room.

            Then, the door opened again. However, it wasn’t Officer Dameron who entered. The woman was short, her greying brown hair was piled on top of her head in a bun. She carried herself with an air of authority that commanded respect. “Finn,” she spoke, “you’re free to leave. Take care of your swelling face.”

            “Yes, captain.” He said before getting up and leaving from the same door the woman had entered.

            Rey stared as the woman sat down across from her. There was something maternal about the way her brown eyes studied the shivering girl before her. “I’m Captain Leia Organa of the Resistance Police Department. I have a few questions for you.”

            Rey didn’t answer, she was studying the woman’s face in the flickering fluorescent lighting of the interrogation room. There was something familiar about her that she couldn’t place. She hadn’t met the woman before, she was certain of that, yet she seemed familiar.

            “What do you know about the First Order?”

            “I’ve never heard of it.”

            “Are you certain?”

            “Why would I lie to you? I just want to go home. Are they some sort of club?”

            “Unfortunately, no.” Captain Organa said. “They are a gang that’s been slowly taking over the streets of this city. We believe that they the root of the drug smugglers and dealers.”

            If anything, she was offended. Rey had never even smoked a cigarette. How would she know anything about the city’s drug cartel? “What does this have to do with me? I told you that I don’t know anything about them.”

            “They tend to frequent the fight scene. Many of their customers go to the fights to place bets and receive some form of entertainment.”

            “Just because I fight doesn’t mean I’m mixed up in that mess.”

            The Captain sat back in her seat as though she was contemplating her options. “You have a slew of charges against you, correct?”

            “That’s what I’ve been told.”

            “I’d like to offer you a deal.”

            At these words Rey sat up straighter in her chair. She leaned towards the woman, clearly interested in what she had to say. If there was any way the fines she would receive would be cut back, she would participate. “What kind of a deal?”

            “You’re familiar with the crowd of people who watch you fight. We need someone who is scrappy and young—someone who will blend in. You’d be perfect for the job. I need somebody to get familiar with the dealers in the First Order and feed us any information that could help us bring them down.”

            Being a rat was dangerous. Rey knew that most people who double crossed any gang didn’t have a very long life expectancy. “What’s in it for me?”

            “All of your charges will be dropped. Your record will stay clean and you won’t face any jail time for assaulting Finn.”

            She chewed on the dead skin on her lower lip while she mulled the offer over. It was going to be dangerous. If she was found out by any of the dealers or other gang members she was as good as dead.

            Organa must have sensed her hesitation because she said, “we will also ensure your safety by upping patrols in your neighborhood. Poe and Finn will check up on you every couple of days. I will even give you my personal number should an emergency occur. We won’t let anything happen to you.”

            A clean record for a bit of spy work didn’t seem like such a bad deal. She could always leave the city if things got too hairy. Resistance wasn’t her favorite place, anyway.

            She took a deep breath before holding out her shackled hands, “you have yourself a deal.”


	8. Chapter 8

            Her name was Tako, Rey learned. It was pronounced like the meat and cheese filled tortillas that she ordered from the Mexican restaurant down the street from her apartment. She was a younger woman, less than thirty but older than herself. She would be quite pretty if it hadn’t been for the scabs and divots that were pocked into her thin face. Her brown eyes were slightly squinted and hazy as she spoke to the boxer. “I just really hate the fuckin’ cops!”

            “Oh,” Rey blinked. She had never intentionally been around somebody who used Methamphetamine and she realized that Tako was very suspicious of everyone. She had to be very careful of what she said to the tweaker, or she could be in a lot of trouble. “Yeah, they’re always sticking their noses where it doesn’t belong.”

            The woman’s glassy eyes narrowed at her briefly before she nodded. “They are. They never mind their own fuckin’ business. I’ve been put in jail three damned times because of them! I ain’t hurting nobody. I just want to get my fix.”

            Rey tugged on the hood of her blue sweatshirt and buried her hands in its pockets. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

            “You do?”

            “Of course. I-I’m always looking for my next hit.”

            “You are?”

            “Yeah, but the thing is that I’ve just moved into town. I don’t know enough people to get my hands on what I need.”

            Suddenly, Tako was leaning in close enough that Rey could smell her putrid breath and see all of her rotting, yellow teeth. Her glassy eyes seemed to look at every freckle and pore on Rey's face. “You don’t look like a junkie.”

            The younger woman's heart was beating double-time in her chest, palms sweaty. “Well, I am!”

            “Nah, people like me have marks from picking at their skin. Y’see?”

            “I see.”

            The thin woman seemed to be looking Rey over for any signs that she would be telling the truth. Thankfully, Rey caught a glimpse at the weeping bloody sores on the back of Tako’s hands.

            Rey held up her knuckles as proof. They were still scabbing over from the night she had been arrested by Officer Dameron. “See, I pick at my hands when I’m coming off a high!”

            She tried not to cringe as the other woman roughly grabbed her hand to hold the lacerations mere inches from her face, as if to assess the origins of the wounds. Finally, she dropped them. “Do y’want a hit? I just bought a batch from my dealer a day ago.”

            “Um,” the fact that she may have been offered some drugs right on the spot hadn’t occurred to her. She hadn’t really thought of what to do in this particular situation. “I prefer to have my own. That way I don’t owe anybody anything.”

            “You’re smart, kid. I like you.”

            She wasn’t sure if Tako liked her because she genuinely thought she was smart, or because her stash was safe for the time being. “Like I said, I’m not from the area. I’m looking for a dealer.”

            “Lemme give you the address of my guy,” the brown skinned woman turned to rummage through her massive purse. “Here’s the deal, he ain’t typically around this spot only once or twice a week. He floats around to keep the pigs off his tail. Just keep popping in and eventually you’ll find him.”

            Rey took the number and stuffed it into the pocket of her jeans. “Um, thank you.”

            “No problem.”

            Her job was done at this particular spot. So, she turned and left the woman muttering to herself on a park bench. She only looked back at the drug addict when she started yelling at a woman with a stroller about her baby having cameras for eyes.

            Rey shuddered and decided that she was glad to be on the same side as the police and not on the side of the addicts.

            She walked down the sidewalk with her head down as she studied the slip of paper Tako had given her. It was ten blocks away and because the park had been within walking distance of her apartment, Rey hadn’t brought her bike. She would have to go back home and get it before venturing to the location of the dealer.

            She looked up as a car thumping loud rap music cruised by and happen to catch a glimpse of a tall dark figure.

            At first, she paid him no mind, but then recognized the way he strutted with confident swagger. Then, she didn’t know how to react. Did she pass Kylo by like she hadn’t seen him? Or did she acknowledge him in a casual way?

            Seeing his profile as he walked nearly right beside her gave her a tingling feeling in her navel. She could still feel his large semi-clumsy hands as they ran over her skin. She could vividly see his dark hair framing his head like a halo as he hovered over her, thrusting relentlessly. She could remember throwing her head back on the pillows and gasping out in pleasure while her fingers raked red lines down his back.

            She looked up when she felt someone staring at her.

            He was gazing at her unwaveringly. His eyes were dark, like he was also remembering the night they had spent together. His lips parted slightly, as if he were drinking in the memories.

            “Kylo?” She finally managed to ask.

            Hearing his name seemed to break the trance he was in because he blinked and actually _looked_ at her in the present. “Rey, right?”

            “Yeah, that’s me.”

            “I never thought I would see you again.”

            “I didn’t either.” 

            It had been meant to be a one night stand, where most partners had sex and never spoke to one another again. Seeing him here randomly on the street was surprising and somewhat embarrassing. Thankfully, what had transpired between them remained between just the two of them. 

            They walked in stride with one another. She had to work a little harder to keep up with his long legs, but she didn’t mind.

            “What brings you out here?” She asked.

            “I’m just coming from a meeting with my boss. What about you?”

            “I was in the park,” she answered. “My apartment isn’t far from here. I was just heading that way.”

            He absorbed this information without speaking. Right then, she decided that was who he was. He wasn’t a big talker but gathered information by sitting in the background and listening to those around him.

            They crossed the street and headed down the block towards a small coffee shop.

            “Do you want to stop for a cup of coffee with me?” He asked, tilting his head slightly in the direction of the blinking neon sign that boasted it was the “world’s best cup of coffee”.

            She didn’t see the harm in having a simple cup of coffee with him. After all, they had spent the night with one another. She thought, ironically, that they were doing things in reverse by having sex and then going on a date later.

            They stepped inside, the smell of coffee made her stomach growl. She hadn’t eaten breakfast that morning and its earthy sweet tones smelled delicious.

            After ordering their coffee, they sat at a small table towards the back of the coffee shop. They were away from the crowds and people sitting on their tablets and laptops.

            “What have you been doing?” He asked her.

            “Working mostly,” she admitted.

            “You’re a boxer, right?”

            “I do box, yes. It’s supplementary income. I also work at a salvage shop just outside of town.”

            Something changed in his face. It was subtle and if she hadn’t been staring right at him when she had said it, she wouldn’t have noticed it. It became a little more closed off, his eyes slightly colder. Despite the changes he said, “that’s interesting.”

            “I suppose. What about you?”

            “I’m a business man.”

            It was difficult for her to picture him in a suit and tie. What kind of business man wore sweatshirts and black jeans to work? “I never would have guessed. Honestly, you look like you belong in a garage band more than an office.”

            “My boss is rather relaxed when it comes to our attire. He doesn’t mind what we wear as long as the job gets done. I don’t work in an office. I usually meet with clients in a public setting.”

            She found this information fascinating. “What kind of business do you do?”

            “We sell insurance.”

            She smiled a little as she raised her coffee cup to her lips. After taking a gulp and letting the hot coffee warm her from the throat downwards she asked, “what put you in the insurance business?”

            One of his long fingers was toying with a frayed hem of his sweatshirt and he took a moment to answer. “When I was younger I was in a bad place,” he started, “I was skipping school and doing drugs with my friends. One day we got busted and I spent three years in Juvenile Detention for it.” He let out a bitter snort, “my uncle was the one to arrested me. He said it was for my own good. Anyways, while I was in there I got to thinking that I wanted to make a lot of money and clean up my act a little. So, when I got out my boss found me and asked me if I wanted a job. I’ve been working for him ever since.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I know that Kylo doesn't lie to Rey in canon because he sees no need to. However, at this point in the story (to avoid giving himself away) I felt that is was necessary. It was a chapter to give him a little bit of backstory, but don't worry you'll all get the truth eventually! And, if anybody has watched Girls (with Adam Driver in it), Tako is a character in it and I thought her name was funny and perfect for this chapter. 
> 
> Thank you all so much for your positive feedback on my last chapter(s)! It was all so inspiring and it means so much to me. Just remember all mistakes are my own.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: This chapter has some dom/sub undertones (but not in the way you're thinking) and has torture.

            The concrete floor was cold and unforgiving on his knees as Kylo Ren knelt with his head bowed in front of his master. It was a rare occurrence that he sought out Snoke for training sessions. The man’s methods were unorthodox and occasionally painful, but they were the only thing that would help him focus.

            The girl had invaded his dreams and thoughts. When he was to be focusing on his duties he found himself thinking of the way her freckles dotted her nose or the absurd way she wore her hair for a fight. He couldn’t get her out of his head and he blamed himself for getting involved that night in front of Maz’s.

            He had seen her fighting first hand under the cover of his black hood and mask. It had been a business call, but she had been there. He had enjoyed watching her attempt to hold her own against her fierce opponent. She was _powerful._

            He found it appealed to every desire he had.

            “Why are you here, Kylo Ren?” Snoke asked as he stood before him, drawing him out of his muddled brain and back to the present situation at hand.

            He curled his fingers into a fist of frustration against the cold floor. It was humiliating to admit that he was unable to do his job because of a girl. It was shameful.

            He didn’t look up at his master as he spoke. “I need your help, Master. I find myself unable to focus on the tasks you have appointed me.”

            It wasn’t the first time he had gone to Snoke with his head hung in shame. In fact, meetings like this had occurred half a dozen times. It pained him to know that he was failing the man who had given him so much.

            Ren was aware that his relationship with Snoke was very similar to the way a dominant and submissive interacted with one another. There were no sexual undertones, of course, but he enjoyed knowing he had somebody to guide him in the right direction when he needed it.

            “I’m sorry,” he said under the weight of Snoke’s gaze.

            “You have no need to feel remorse. You’re still young and have much to learn. That much is obvious from that knife wound on your side.”

            When brought to his attention, the stab wound throbbed angrily just below his left ribs. It had been the result of a meeting with one of their men who had been funneling money that belonged to the First Order into his personal bank account. As it had turned out, the man had brought a friend with him and he had snuck up behind Kylo when he had least expected it and stabbed him. 

             Hearing his failure being thrown back in his face stung. He breathed a few steady breaths before he replied in a tight voice, “they were dealt with accordingly.”

            Snoke’s shiny shoes passed in front of him and came to a halt just inches from his nose. “You’re not here to speak of that. You’re here to remember who you are and what your job is.”

            “Yes, ma—” Kylo’s words were cut off by a sudden fiery pain that flared from the knife wound due to a swift kick from his master. The pain jolted up his side, and throughout his body. He gritted his teeth and did his best to stifle a groan of pain. His arms wobbled with the urge to grasp at the jagged slice but he held fast. 

            He was not weak. Therefore, he would not show weakness.

            “Tell me why you’re having trouble focusing.” Snoke had crouched down in front of him now. His scarred and pocked face was mere inches from his own.

            The knight didn’t avoid his teacher’s gaze this time. “I keep having invasive thoughts. I need to forget them.”

            “Very well. Stand up and have a seat.”

            He stood, muscles cramped from being bowed down for quite some time. His side throbbed and upon inspection, the wound was swollen, red, and bleeding. His eyes spotted the chair in the corner of the room and his pulse quickened.

            His bare feet scuffed against the concrete as he slowly made his way towards semi-reclined chair. He had only been in the chair once before—shortly after Snoke hired him—and it wasn’t a pleasant experience.

            He was scared.

            He was thrilled.

            This was just the kind of the pain he would need to get Rey out of his mind. It would hurt like hell but it would be in his best interest to completely forget about the girl.

            He lowered himself onto the false leather of the chair. His black drawstring pants provided a thin barrier between his backside and the cracked material covering it.

            He tensed as two of Snoke’s men strapped his arms down to the armrests of the chair with thick leather straps with leather buckles. One of them began to stick electrodes down his abdomen while the other tightened a belt on his waist and legs.

            He swallowed as the last two electrodes were attached to his head.

            One of the guards stuffed a piece of thick leather between his teeth.

            “Do you remember how this works, Ren?” Snoke asked as he stood before his restrained apprentice.

            Kylo nodded, biting down on the leather between his teeth. He tightened his grip on the chair in anticipation.

            “You will…meditate throughout this procedure. When we’re done you’ll be thinking clearly again.” There was something cynical in the man’s beady eyes as he raised his thumb and pressed it down firmly on the switch that turned on the machine.

            At first, the shocks pulsing through his body felt kind of pleasant. Then, it started to ache and finally it was excruciating.

            His body jerked against the electrical pulses running through his body. He bit down on the leather, screams ripping from his throat as the pain clouded his ability to think. It seemed to last forever.

            There was a pause where Snoke turned off the machine. He stood over his apprentice, his pointed face analytical. “Does your mind feel clear?”

            He considered the question and then shook his head. He felt too raw and unhardened. If he got out of the chair now, Rey would make her way to the forefront of his mind again.

            His master didn’t ease him into the pain the second time. Instead, he started the machine right where they had left off.

            Kylo’s body was completely consumed by the agony it was in, jerking and thrashing.

            In his mind, there was nothing but pain and that simply wouldn’t do. No, he would have to be put through the vicious cycle again and again until his mind was able to think clearly despite the fact that his body was writhing.

            Snoke hit him again and again.

            Throughout the pain there was a break of clarity, much like the sun peeking out behind the clouds on a rainy day. He reached for that clarity in his mind and focused on it.

            He was Kylo Ren.

            He was the most feared man employed by the First Order.

            His duty was to protect Supreme Leader Snoke at any and all cost.

            He was a predator.

            Once he was released he made an attempt to stand, but his knees gave out from the effort. He hit the concrete hard enough to scrape his knees bloody.

            He shivered from the sheen of sweat that clung to his skin, causing his hair to stick to his temple in black curls.

            “How do you feel, Ren?”

            “Focused, Master.”

            “Tell me.”

            Although Snoke hadn’t clarified what he meant, Kylo knew. “I am Kylo Ren, first knight of the Knights of Ren. We are to serve and protect you. We are to maintain order within the First Order.”

            “Anything else?”

            He considered the question briefly before saying, “there is nothing and nobody more important than the First Order.”

            Snoke paced around him, studying his apprentice with silent appeasement. He stopped in front of him and finally said, “You have done well today, Ren. You are excused from our lessons until further notice.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, if anybody has some really good tips on how to right smut please contact me. I'm very green at it and don't exactly know how to do it well. 
> 
> I feel like this story has so much potential and I'm not doing it justice. That being said, if anybody wants to be a collaborator/editor for this story please contact me as well! I would really like to get with someone and smooth out everything that has been written and everything that will be written in the future.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your supportive words! I'm am so thankful for all of those who have decided to give this story a chance no matter if you comment/give kudos or just read it whenever I update. Thank you all!
> 
> As a disclaimer, I do not recommend trying to treat medical conditions at home in lieu of going to the hospital. PLEASE go to the hospital!

           “Rey?”

            At the sound of her name Rey turned her attention away from her breath fogging up the window in Officer Dameron’s car. She turned to look at him, arms crossed over her chest to try and rid herself of the miserable chill of the day. “Sorry. What were you saying?”

            “I was saying that since you’ve started working under cover for us, our bust rate has gone up quite a bit.” The Hispanic man looked at her with a crooked affectionate smile. “You’re doing great, kid.”

            “You really think so?”

            “Definitely. Do you have any interest in going to school?”

            Rey’s smile flickered and he licked her lips, “not really. I can’t really afford it. I know there’s scholarships, grants, and loans but I’ll be in debt for the rest of my life. I’m actually pretty happy where I am. Why?”

            “I was just thinking that you would make a great officer one day.”

            She sat up a little straighter in the passenger seat of his undercover car. “You really think so?”

            “Definitely. But, you need a degree in criminal justice and you have to go through the police academy.”

            She shook her head, “I’m not really interested.”

            Poe shrugged, “I’m not trying to convince you or anything. What do you have for me today?”

            Rey shifted in her seat and produced a wrinkled and water-stained piece of paper. She handed it to him. “This guy was talking about a woman they call ‘Phasma’. I imagine it’s a pseudonym.”

            He studied the paper with a small frown. There wasn’t much on it as far as information went. It was just a hastily scribbled name ‘Phasma’. 

            “They don’t have any idea of her whereabouts?”

            “No, from the sounds of it she never meets them in the same place. That’s what appears to happen when the higher-ups in the First Order get involved. I’ve heard something about a Lord Ren, but haven’t heard anything about him except for the fact that he’s a hitman.”

            “That would explain the bodies that have been found.”

            She had seen murder first hand in the boxing ring a few weeks ago. The fact that somebody was able to kill in public at a crowded event and escape without being caught made her chest tighten.

            The world was much darker than she imagined.

            “You’re going to find him right?”

            Poe looked at her and for a moment he looked exhausted with dark circles under his eyes, his face lined with stress and age. “We’re trying.”

            She had learned long ago when her parents had been killed in a car crash with a drunk driver who had fled the scene that “trying” in police terms meant they wanted to help but had no leads or any idea where to begin.

            “It’s raining out there. Do you want a lift home?”

            “Yes please.”

            She sat quietly with her hands folded as the officer pulled away from the curb.

            Part of her wished she would have gone to college to become a police officer. Perhaps she would have been able to make a difference in the world. Then again, the world wasn’t going to change because of her. There were billions of other people on the planet, a small girl from Jakku, Indiana wasn’t going to make a difference.

            She watched the people hunched over against the weather as the trudged down the sidewalk to their destination. How many of them were a part of the First Order? It was clear that the gang’s outreach had spread like a cancerous tumor throughout Resistance. She had learned that if somebody wasn’t mixed up in the mess, they knew someone who was.

            When the car was stopped at a red light her eyes paused on a tall figure dressed in black. The way he carried himself, the slope of his shoulders, and his long legs all were very familiar to her. The memory of him was always lingering in the back of her mind.

            Kylo stopped, placing a hand on his side. Under his black hood his face pale and squinched up in pain.

            Rey stared at him.

            He had no idea she was just a dozen feet away from him.

            Her nose was practically pressed against the glass as she frowned at him. Something was wrong. He was sick.

            Kylo sucked on the filter of a cigarette, his fingers twitching against his side. Then, in an entrancing way, he stopped twitching and moving. His dark eyes rolled into the back of his head and his long legs folded beneath him, sending him crashing to the pavement.

            Poe was pressing down against the gas pedal as she shouted, “ _Stop_!”

            “What?” The cop demanded, but it was too late. Rey was already out of the car and in the bone-chilling rain as she moved to him.

            She knelt at Kylo’s side, the cigarette smoking and smoldering just inches from his face. She pushed his wet hair from his forehead, the skin hot to the touch where it brushed against her palm. Curiously, she pushed the black sweatshirt up to reveal a red, swollen, and undoubtedly infected cut slashed into his side.

            “Rey, what the hell are you doing?” Poe demanded as he crouched next to her. “You can’t just...he’s been stabbed. We need to get him to a hospital.”

            “No,” she shook her head as she let the shirt fall back into place. She grabbed one of his arms and draped it over her shoulders. “We’ll take him to my place. When he wakes up I’ll ask him if he wants to go to the hospital.”

            “Kid, there is protocol I have to follow! I have to take him to the hospital.”

            Rey glared at him, water dripping from the hair that had fell loose from the bun she wore, “Are you on the clock right now?”

            Poe’s face crumpled as he gave in. “Fine, but if Organa finds out about this I could lose my job.” He put Kylo’s other long arm over his shoulder and stood up.

            It was difficult, but together they dragged him to the car. Then, they struggled to stuff him into the backseat without hurting him further.

            The ride to her apartment was silent, filled with obvious tension. Dameron had made it very clear that he wasn’t happy about her decision to avoid taking the unconscious man to her apartment instead of the hospital and Rey stood firm on what she believed they needed to do.

            Getting the six-foot-three man up the stairs to her apartment had been an adventure. At one point, her grip on his arm had slipped and it had nearly sent him and Poe down three flights of stairs.

            “Place him on the bed,” she demanded as she pointed to the bedroom. She began to sift through the various drawers and cupboards in her kitchen while the officer did as she told him.

            Her apartment was far from ideal; dust bunnies lurked in the corners, ants took up residence in her cupboards, and there was a layer of grime over everything that she couldn’t remove no matter how hard she scrubbed. She knew there was a chance that Poe was judging her, but she didn’t have time to worry about that right now.

            “He’s on the bed,” the man informed her as he came into the kitchen. “I’m going to wash my hands of this situation before it gets any worse. If you decide he needs to go to the hospital, call me.”

            “I will,” Rey promised.

            Once she was alone with Kylo, she took an armful of supplies to her bedroom. Taking off his sweatshirt proved to be a trying task, but she managed to do it without cutting it off his body.

            It appeared that he had taken a beating recently, his skin was covered in bruises in various stages of healing. It almost looked like he had been jumped in a back alley somewhere.

            “What happened to you?” She asked him quietly.

            He didn’t answer her.

            She lit a candle and heated up the blade of her pocket knife in the flame. Then she carefully punctured the area next to the jagged red wound.

            The smell of the pus that drained from the injury was revolting. She covered her nose with the sleeve of her sweat shirt as she wiped it away with paper towels.

            Once the wound was successfully drained, she cleaned the wound with an anti-septic, smeared antibacterial ointment on it, and placed gauze over it.

            After she placed a cool washrag on his forehead in an attempt to bring his fever down, she curled up in a chair next to her bed and waited for him to regain consciousness.

            She dozed off to the sound of the rain pattering against the windowpane, but when he groaned she woke.

            Kylo blinked at her with glassy eyes. A frown creased his brow as he studied her small apartment. He looked at his bare chest, then dropped his head back to her pillow. “What the fuck?”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for being a day late, lovelies! I've had a very eventful weekend thus far and have finally had the chance to slow down and procrastinate studying!...I mean, write this chapter!

            “Yeah, ‘what the fuck’ seems to work for both of us right now,” Rey said, her slender arms crossed over her chest.

            “How did I get here?” He asked. Judging from the withered flowers in the vase next to the bed and the hand-made doll sitting next to it with a grim-stitched smile.

            He had gone to the gym in an attempt to shake off the crummy feeling that had been clinging to him like a second skin. He had been feeling hot, achy, and sick. Sweating it out had worked for him in the past, but on the way home he had started to feel weaker than usual. He had been waiting for the crosswalk light to signal that it was his time to cross the street when he felt dizzy. Watching the face pressed to the passenger-side window of a black car blur in and out of focus was the last thing he remembered.

            “My friend and I brought you here.”

            He sat up, his hand flitting to his side where a fresh bandage was placed over the tender wound against his ribs. He blinked down at it while he processed what the significance of its presence meant. “You did this?” He finally asked her.

            “It was infected, you nut. What the hell happened to you?” Rey stood at the side of the bed, biting her lip. Her brown eyes looked _anywhere_ but directly at him.

            He remembered the hot sting of pain as the blade of the knife had sunk into his skin and the pure rage that had accompanied the realization that he had been tricked and double crossed by a simple-minded drug peddler.

            That would be too complicated to explain, so he offered the simplest explanation that he could. “I got in a fight.”

            The look on her face told him that she was skeptical of his answer. “In a fight with a lion? A bear, perhaps?”

            “No. It was a knife.”

            This news seemed to exasperate her and suck the life out of her at once. She dropped her face into her small hands and sighed. She mumbled something under her breath before looking back at him. She waved her arms asking for a silent elaboration on the incident.

            He really wished she wouldn’t ask for the nitty-gritty details of his life. It was safer for her to be in blissful ignorance. In fact, it was safer for him to forget she even existed. Which, was why he had gone to Snoke for help.

            “Well?”

            “I was fighting with the one guy and his buddy came up behind me and stabbed me.”

            She blinked at him, mouth dropped in disbelief. Her brows furrowed in a mixture of disbelief and frustration. “And you didn’t think you should go to the hospital?!”

            “I’ve been stabbed before.”

            “Where?”

            “Remember when I told you I went to prison?”

***

_Prison was no place for someone whose mother **and** uncle were both very high-ranking and respectable members of the police force. Prison was no place for Ben Solo. _

_He had learned that within the first week of his incarceration._

_Managing to stay under the radar of those kids who were ten times tougher and meaner than him hadn’t been hard. At the age of sixteen he was lanky and awkward. Sure, he was obscenely tall for his age, but he weighed less than one hundred and fifty pounds._

_The humiliation of meeting his mom—Lieutenant Leia Organa-Solo—in the police station, being dragged by his uncle, and high off Demerol still burned deeply within him. **That** had been an awful experience for the both of them, but the weeks leading up to his trial were even worse. _

_Leia kept him under constant supervision of either herself or Luke while Han made himself more scarce than ever and drinking heavily in Ben’s presence to numb the humiliation of the fact that his son,_   _who had once been an honor student, was going to go to juvenile detention._

_As if his dysfunctional family needed to be even more fucked up._

_Ben blamed himself, of course. Well, himself and Luke for being suck a nosy prick._

_Still, he wasn’t a hardened criminal like some of the kids that he was locked away with. He didn’t set his out on fire, beat the shit out of his step-father, rape anybody, or steal._

_He didn’t belong here, he thought._

_Just a week after being in Juvie, he experienced his first fight. He wasn’t entirely sure how it had started. He just knew a table got flipped over and it turned into a full-blown riot. Arms and legs were flying, officers and inmates were both screaming, and in the midst of all the pushing and shoving, he found himself bleeding all over the tile floor._

_Someone had lodged a shank made out of a razor blade and a pen in his thigh._

_From then on, he decided two things. The first being that nobody was going walk all over him **ever** again and secondly, Luke Skywalker was going to pay for putting him through this hell._

***

            “Earth to Kylo,” Rey’s voice pulled him out of the memory. “Are you listening to me?”

            He hadn’t been, obviously. He ran his thumb over his jeans where the triangle shaped scar that the crudely made prison shank had left behind. “No. I’m sorry.”

            She snorted, “I asked if you were hungry.”

            “No.”

            “Well I am.” With that, she left him alone in her bedroom. It didn’t take more than a moment or two before he heard her rifling around in the kitchen.

            Kylo stood up and looked for his shirt. When he couldn’t seem to find it he wandered out to the kitchen, where she stood pouring macaroni into a pot on the stove. He watched her briefly before saying, “you’re supposed to boil the water before you add the noodles.”

            She set the half-full box on the counter and turned to face him. Her lips were tilted upwards in an amused way. “Well, I’m a terrible cook. I don’t have much experience at it.”

            “Why is that?”

            She shrugged, gnawing at the dead skin on her lower lip and he got the immediate sense that whatever it was wasn’t a pleasant topic of conversation for her.

            “Never mind,” he dismissed his previous question. He moved to the ancient stove and adjusted the temperature of the flame. He could feel her eyes burning holes into his back, tracing the scars the laid against his pale skin, memorizing his freckles and beauty marks.

            Once the macaroni was off to a satisfactory start he turned to look at her…and instantly regretted it.

            She was staring at him with a glean of hunger and want in her eyes. It was the same look she had given him in front of Maz’s Cantina, the very look that had been the start of all of his problems.

            He should have known better than to step towards her, he should have known better than to lean down and press his mouth to hers, and he certainly should have known better than to press her against him with a hand firmly planted to the small of her back.

            Their mouths moved against each other hungrily, teeth clacking, breaths escaping in heavy desperate pants. She was backed up against the counter, the chipped and peeling linoleum finish crackling as she leaned against it.

            Suddenly, she was slightly taller as she pulled herself onto the counter. Her legs wrapped around him as he pressed starving kisses down her jaw and under her chin.

            He shouldn’t be do this.

            Her fingers escaped his hair long enough to pull her ratty sweater over her head and cast it to the floor before she was reaching for his belt loops and tugging him closer.

            Kylo stared at her chest, flushed and heaving with the intensity of the moment. Her simple sports bra wasn’t meant to be sexy, but it was so _fitting_.  He wanted nothing more than to peel it away from her skin and reveal what he knew was lying beneath.

            He couldn’t.

            “Is something wrong?”

            “I…” He couldn’t let himself become sidetracked again. He couldn’t be thinking about her when his mind needed to be on his job. He was going to get arrested or worse if his mind wasn’t in the right place. He would need to admit to Snoke he was a failure if he couldn’t concentrate.

            “Kylo?”

            “I can’t do this.” He picked his sweatshirt and backpack from its haphazardly tossed position by the door. He could feel the weight of her gaze as he left.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter bounces around in POV's a lot, just a heads up. 
> 
> And I am SO sorry for updating late. I haven't had time to do it until today. However, I will be publishing again on Friday like normal.
> 
> This chapter is un-edited.

            Poe Dameron had never seen them coming.

            He had gone out to the grocery store down the street to get a gallon of milk and catfood for his orange and white tabby, Beebee Eight, before turning in for the night.

            It had been dark, miserable, and rainy just like many of the nights in Resistance. He thought nothing of the two men walking behind him with their hoods up against the weather. It was a silly mistake, being that he was a cop…one who had put away dozens of criminals: criminals with friends.

            “You gotta light?” One of them asked.

            Poe turned to look at them, “No. I don’t smoke.”

            “Aw, too bad.” 

            He eyed the other man as he reached into the pocket of the sweatshirt he wore, dark eyes searching for a knife or a gun. He didn’t even see the second man pull a stun gun out of his pocket until he was writhing on the wet pavement, a gallon of two-percent leaking onto the sidewalk next to him.

            Now, he hurt all over.

            He wasn’t exactly sure where he was. All he knew was he was restrained, arm suspended above his head, feet barely scraping the filthy concrete floor below his shoes.

            The room around him was dimly lit, elongated shadows lurking just outside the circle of light the bare bulb overhead illuminated.

            Standing just outside of the circle stood a man. He was tall, dressed in black from head to toe, his hands covered by black leather gloves that undoubtedly cost more than his paycheck. The most frightening thing about him was the shining black helmet he wore, it reflected back the only source of light in the room.

            “I had no idea we had the best police officer in Resistance in our presence,” he spoke. His voice was eerily distorted by the mask.

            This was _bad_ and nobody would even know where he was. He had no chance of getting out of this alone.

            Poe’s gut clenched, but he was careful to keep his expression as neutral as he could. Thankfully, his job on the force gave him years of practice. He said, “I try not to brag.”

            “Comfortable?”

            “Not really.”

            The figure stepped into the circle of light now, just a foot away from the officer. He was _tall_ and even more intimidating up close than he had been just feet away. Which, was quite incredible because he was terrifying.

            “Do you know why you’re here?”

            “No.”

            “You’ve been awfully nosey, Officer Dameron. You’re sticking your nose in places where it doesn’t belong. It’s not a good situation for your or for us.”

            Poe swallowed and closed his eyes for a brief moment. The man was talking about the arrest he’d been making concerning the drug dealers, makers, and runners within the First Order. He must have drawn quite a bit of attention to himself when he arrested so many of their people within a few week span.

            Finn was in danger for being his partner.

            Rey was in danger for being a civilian mixed up in a mess she never should have been involved with in the first place.

            If anything happened to either of them Poe wasn’t sure he could survive with the guilt. _If_ he survived this at all.

 

***

 

            Maz’s was a strange sight to behold during the day, Han decided as he stood in the middle of the spotless bar, the air hazy from the previous night’s cigarette smoke. Every booth and table was empty, the bar polished and waiting for the first drinks of the day to be slid down its smooth top, and the jukebox in the corner sitting silently.

            He took a few steps towards the middle of the room, the scuffed wooden floor creaking in distress under his steel-toed boots.

            Maz had to be floating around this place somewhere, didn’t she? He needed her help.

            “You’re the last person I’d expect to be here this early in the morning.” Maz’s voice was weary, knowing, and all together unimpressed. She appeared in front of him with a mug of steaming coffee in her hand, her hair in rollers, her robe on over her nightgown.

            “Maz,” he said.

            “You need something from me, Han Solo.”

            He nearly flinched under the accusing tone in her voice. As usual, she was right. It was a rare occasion that he visited her just for social reason. She was the go-to person when he needed something done or needed to get ahold of someone. It seemed she knew a person for everything.

            She took a sip of her coffee. When he still hadn’t said anything she prompted him with a raised brow. When he still didn’t respond she said, “I’m not getting any younger, I’m afraid.”

            This morning, he had gone out to the dumpster to throw out some junk tires while waiting for Rey and Chewbacca to show up, and when he had flipped open the plastic lid there had been a body inside. It had been so dismembered and chopped up that he hadn’t been able to tell if it was a man or a woman.

            He knew who he needed to contact, but he wasn’t able to do it on his own.

            “Maz, I need you to get ahold of Leia for me. There was a dead body in my—”

            “No!” She snapped abruptly.

            Han had spent his younger years fighting with men twice his size on the drag-strip, in the pits, and in everyday life. He didn’t back down from a fight and not even finding the body in his dumpster had shaken him, but he would be a liar if he said the sharpness in Maz’s voice hadn’t made him flinch. “What? Why not?!”

            “Han, you cannot keep running from this fight forever,” she scolded. “You drive your behind over to the police station and you tell her what you found. Do you understand?”

            Reluctantly, he nodded.

            She must have sensed that he didn’t really want to talk to Leia, their divorce had been quite a messy one after all. “It will look awfully bad on your behalf if the garbage man finds that corpse before you tell her you’re the one that found it.”

            She was right, and he knew it.

            He thanked her, bid her farewell, and climbed into the Falcon. He fired up the engine, listening to it snarl wickedly before he put it into first gear and burned rubber as he left his parking space.

            He had wanted to talk to Leia again, but not like this.

 

***

 

            Kylo climbed the steps to his apartment building, hand fluttering to his side unconsciously. His wound was healing, thanks to Rey.

            _Rey_.

            Her name was like a fresh knife wound, straight through his ribs. Every time he thought of her he couldn’t help but see her disappointment and confusion when he had left her behind in her apartment, standing in her bra over a boiling pot of macaroni noodles.

            It wasn’t that he hadn’t wanted to take her right there in the kitchen, he had. He knew that if he had done it all of the training he had gone through with Snoke would have been destroyed. What would his master say upon finding out that something had weakened him once again and so soon?

            His feelings for her were starting to get harder and harder to deny. The more he seemed to make it a point to forget about her the more he seemed to think about her.

            The good news was he only thought about her when he was alone. Snoke’s training had helped him focus on the job, but during the hours when he was alone in his condo—lying in the bed where they had slept together for the first time—she invaded his mind with the same ruthlessness Hitler had used when he had invaded Poland.

            It was torture.

            He headed towards his front door and only slowed his pace slightly when he saw Phasma standing outside.

            When he had left the prisoner in the soundproof basement of Snoke’s building, he hadn’t made much headway with the prisoner. The only thing he knew was that there was a girl that had given him Phasma’s name a week ago.

            “What are you doing here?” He asked her.

            “I came to find out what you learned. Apparently, it’s _my_ name floating from the mouths of our employees. It is _my_ life on the line.” Her voice was hard, her face etched into lines of annoyance.

            Phasma was typically easy to get along with, finding out that members of the First Order were giving out her name to the police was disconcerting. He understood her anxiety over the matter.

            Kylo unlocked the door and invited her in. Without a word, he stepped onto his balcony to have a cigarette. She joined him, the minty smell of menthol wafting from the smoke she exhaled.

            They smoked in companionable silence for a long moment before she asked, “What did you find out?”

            He ran his thumb over his cracked and bruised knuckles as he reflected on his hours with Poe Dameron. He had to give the man credit, he had a will of iron. However, like all things, iron bends when enough pressure is applied. “There is a girl who feeds him all of his information. She poses as a junkie and speaks with the dealers and runners. She is the one that gave him your name.”

            Phasma flicked the ash off the end of her cigarette before eyeing him with blue eyes framed by winged eyeliner, her short-cropped blonde hair blowing in the early morning breeze. “What are you going to do about it?”

            “Find her and interrogate her. We’ll put an end to this nonsense once and for all.”

            “How?”

            “By killing her, of course.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has been an eventful morning here at my house. My dad called me (I'm home alone) and told me to lock all of the doors in the house because a murder suspect was spotted literally five minutes from my house and the school was on lockdown. So, I've been writing this fic with my .12 gauge sitting in the corner beside me and my .22 in the kitchen with a loaded clip in it lol. The good news is, they caught him. The bad news is I'm paranoid as fuck right now lol. 
> 
> Due to the shennanigans in my life today this chapter is unedited.
> 
> We're back on schedule for updating, just as I promised! 
> 
> WARNING: this chapter has some violence at the end. Things are going to take a dark turn from this point.

           Dealing with drug addicts was exhausting. Rey had been doing her best to try and dig up as much information as she could about this Phasma woman. What she had dredged up thus far had given her some idea what she did, but it did little to tell her _who_ she was or _where_ she was.

            It had literally taken her almost an hour extract that fact that Phasma’s job was to train the dealers and runners. The man she had been speaking to had kept breaking off and staring into empty space while picking at the skin on his face. There had been times where his eyes had glazed over for long that Rey had almost slapped him back to sobriety…almost.

            She was now strolling down the sidewalk towards her side of town. Typically, Poe was pretty good about hanging around while waiting for her to get done extracting information and picking her up a few blocks from her meeting place. Over the past few days all she had heard from him was complete and total radio silence. It was strange.

            She looked up as a beat up red car pulled up to the curb. The window rolled down and Finn leaned forward to peer at her from the driver’s seat. “Rey,” he said, “get in.”

            Rey got in without question. Finn was Poe’s partner, after all. She shut the door and clicked the seatbelt into place.

            Finn didn’t really say much to her, which was out of character. He had been bitter about his swollen face for a week or so after they had met, but after that he had opened up and as it turned out he was a really friendly guy who cared about the well-being of everyone he came into contact with.

            His typically youthful face was lined heavily, eyes sunken with exhaustion. There was a general air of discomfort surrounding the officer.

            She finally addressed the elephant in the room, “where is Poe?”

            Finny didn’t answer right away. Instead, he picked up an extra-large coffee much and took a couple of hearty swallows before he spoke. “We don’t know.”

            “What do you mean you ‘don’t know’?”

            “He’s been missing since Tuesday night. Nobody has heard or seen from him. I stopped by his apartment and I found his cat mewling at the door. He ate through the plastic on a loaf of bread and had been eating that.”

            “Have you tried calling him?”

            He looked at her with a rather sour expression. “Don’t you think we tried to call him twenty different times when he didn’t show up for work two days in a row?”

            Rey felt stupid and sank a little lower in the passenger seat.

            “Enough about him. We’ll find him…wherever he is. What did you find out about Phasma?”

            “She trains the dealers and runners so they don’t get caught.”

            “What else?”

            “That’s it.”

            “That it?” The exasperation was clear in his tone.

            She snapped, “yes that is it! Do you know how hard it is to carry on a conversation with a man who can’t stop staring at a stain in the sidewalk? He would literally just stop talking in the middle of a sentence. If you don’t like what I’m doing why don’t you do it yourself? It would save my ass in the long run, I’m sure.”

            For a long, long moment only the sound of his turning signal broke the silence between them in an even pattern.

            “I’m sorry,” Finn finally said. “At the department, we’ve been working day and night trying to find Dameron. We keep drawing blanks. The last person to see him was the clerk at the convenience store down the street from his house. It’s been a stressful few days.”

            Rey didn’t answer, she just stared out the window try to wrap her mind around the idea that Poe was missing and could possibly even be dead.

            He was such a nice guy, he wasn’t like the other cops she had dealt with (and there had been a few). He always picked her up from her undercover work, he would swing by her apartment and ensure she was doing fine.

            “I hope he’s okay,” she said.

            “Me too, kid. Me too.”

***

 

            Rey’s apartment was empty.

            Well, it was always empty, but after Kylo had left nearly two weeks ago it felt even more empty than usual. At first, it had been strange sharing it with him while he slept off his fever, but after he left her shirtless, fired up, and confused it felt emptier than ever.

            It was almost as if he belonged there.

            “You’re being ridiculous,” she told herself. “He’s just a boy. It’s not as though you haven’t slept with anyone else before. It was only supposed to be a one night stand anyway.”

            Rey gathered her dirty clothes from the floor of her bedroom and began to methodically stuff them into a bag so she could go to the laundry mat.

            It was nearly midnight, but thankfully the laundry mat was open late.

            She had shown up to work only to find a single police officer pulling out of the driveway. When she asked Han about it he said, “Don’t worry about it, kid.” Later, when she went to take out the trash the dumpster had vanished. When she asked Han about it again, he just repeated his previous statement telling her not to worry about it.

            Then, after work she had gone straight to Lucas’s to train. As usual, he had taken no pity on her and worked her until her muscles ached and her skin was covered in a layer of sweat.

            Then she had wasted time gleaning virtually no information from Stu the drug addict.

            Now, she was going to do her laundry and hopefully get a few hours of sleep before she did it all again.

            Rey slung her laundry bag over her shoulder, it weighed nearly as much she did. Then she lugged it down three flights of stairs before strapping it to the back of her bike with a bungee cord.

            She fired up the engine and listened to it purr. The new engine she had gotten from her “blind date” deal with Han ran like a dream. When she revved the throttle in snarled in a way that sent a shiver down her spine.

            Her bike was a beast.

            She strapped her helmet on and pulled away from the curb.

            The nearest laundry mat wasn’t too far away from her apartment, just two or three miles with what seemed to be a hundred stoplights in between.

            It was a pleasant night, the air tacky and humid. The sky threatened rain, but it had yet to start. If she was lucky she could get back home with dry clothing. Riding a motorcycle in the rain was dangerous. It wasn’t like her helmet had windshield wipers.

            She stopped at a red light and waited for it to turn green.

            A black SUV pulled to a stop behind her, its high beams blazing in the night.

            She squinted against them with a frown. Why did they feel the need to have their high beams on the in the city? The entire street was illuminated by street lights.

            Rey swore under her breath and eased her bike forward. She would be out of this jackass’s way in just a few minutes.

            She managed to make it in second gear, just on the other side of the intersection when she got hit from behind.

            Her bike bucked severely beneath her. She tried desperately to keep it upright, but failed.

            Stars danced behind her eyes as her helmet cracked against the pavement, her jeans ripped against the pavement as her bike skidded down the road in a shower of sparks. Her hands were scraped bloody and raw as she tried to slow her body down on the road.

            Once her body and the bike came to a stop, Rey at up. She was dazed and confused,  her left ankle shot white-hot pain up her leg when she sat up.

            She shoved the bike off her leg and staggered to her feet, tossing her cracked helmet to the ground in a fit of rage. “What the fuck?” She demanded to the two figures that approached her. “Who the fuck taught you how to drive?”

            They didn’t answer her right away.

            “Hello? Are you deaf or just stupid? You could have killed me, you bloody idiots!”

            The one looked at her with narrowed eyes before lunging for her. He grabbed her and spun her around so her back was pinned to him.

            “ _Oi_!” She shouted before kicking at him with her good foot. When it hardly seemed to faze him she threw her elbow back and nailed him in the face before jerking her head back.

            His nose made an audible crunch and he released her with a grunt.

            She limped away as quickly as she could…which wasn’t very fast. Her leg felt as though it was going to give out from beneath her.

            The second man hit her with a hard right hook.

            Thankfully she was used to taking a direct hit, it hardly slowed her down. She hit him back with a punch that was powered with rage. Typically, her hits were thrown methodically in a fight but this one was wild and struck him in the teeth.

            The first man was back on her. She struggled against him, snarling like a feral cat in heat as she fight against him. He had an advantage over her in size and ability.

            She liked to think that she put up a good fight, she really did. She fought until blood dripped from her nose, until her leg couldn’t hold her anymore. Then, when his arm around her throat cut off her air, she fought until her vision tunneled and her world went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to those who have given kudos and reviews! A special shout out to   
> PoorQuequeg for binge reading the entire story in such a short amount of time and commenting on every chapter!


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! It's super late here, but I managed to squeeze this chapter out. I apologize for any errors in advance!
> 
> WARNING: This chapter mentions violence and blood.

           “You alright, kid?”

            Rey pried her eyes open, head swimming groggily.

            Being choked out was exhausting. She had regained consciousness on the ride over, a black sack had been cinched over her head, her hands tied behind her back. They had let her squirm, cuss, and try to kick her way out of the car for a little while. When they had tired of it they had sedated her and she was just waking up from the drug.

            Her eyes swam in and out of focus at the voice. Everything was hazy and she felt disoriented, no doubt she was still a little doped up. She blinked a few times before squinting in the dim light of the bare bulb. “O-Offier Dameron?”

            Poe looked horrible. Like her, his arms were tied above his head, toes barely skimming the cement floor. His hair was matted to his head with grease, blood, and sweat. His face was lined with stressed, painted with bruises, marred with cuts. His eyes were weary, his forced posture exhausted. His voice was no better when he answered, “Yeah, it’s me. I’m so sorry kid.”

            Her voice was raw and her throat sore from where that bastard had choked her out. “Where are we?”

            “One of the buildings that the First Order has. God, you look awful.”

            “Thanks, you don’t look much better yourself.”

            “What did they do to you?”

            Rey tried her best to sort out how she remembered the events that had led up to this particular moment. “They hit me while I was driving my motorcycle. I tried to fight them off.”

            “Christ,” Dameron muttered with a shake of his head. “I’m sorry, Rey. I didn’t mean to get you mixed up in this mess. This wasn’t supposed to happen, I swear.”

            A dull ache throbbed within her. She didn’t think it had anything to do with her physical injuries; the sedatives had pretty much eliminated that problem for the time being. “Of course,” she whispered around her fat lip. “It’s because I’m a rat, isn’t it?”

            He sighed, head hanging in defeat. It was a sound filled with regret and guilt.

            She knew she was right.

            She didn’t know whether or not to be angry or feel sorry for herself. _I should have known better than to strike a deal with the police_ , she thought bitterly. She decided that she should have paid the fines, gone to the court hearings, and had gotten it over with.

            “Why do they want _me_?”

            “They want to know what you know. They’re going to find out what you told who. Then, they said they’re going to...”

            “They’re going to what?”

            Poe shook his head in distress. “Don’t make me say it, kid.”

            “ _Tell me_.”

            “Kill you, okay? They’re going to kill you when they’re done interrogating you.”

            Rey sucked in a shocked breath, the movement making her ribs ache and her lungs burn. Her heart was beating a rapid cadence in her chest, her eyes were starting to sting. They were going to kill her like she was just livestock instead of a human being.

            She yanked desperately on the bindings that held her arms suspended above her head. The result was just a sad clinking of chain and excruciating pain shooting up her leg.

            Her leg had been pinned beneath her bike when it had been hit. Not only were her jeans in complete tatters, her leg had been caught beneath the bike. She had sprained her ankle or shattered it, she wasn’t entirely sure.

            She let out a pained sound and stilled.

            She didn’t know anything that the drug buyers didn’t know. She didn’t know who the head of the First Order was—or anybody of significance—for that matter. Rey had a feeling that her argument wouldn’t be perceived well by her interrogators when they arrived.

            For a long time there was no sounds but their breathing. Finally, she found herself asking how long he had been taken.

            “I don’t know,” he answered, “I haven’t seen the sun since the day I was taken. People come in and out every few hours, day or night.”

            That was fairly discouraging news, but she wondered if the reason he had missed their “meeting” the other day was because he had been here.

            “Has anybody been feeding my cat, Beebee Eight?”

            “Finn has,” she answered. “He’s been worried sick about you.”

            Poe swore softly in Spanish before saying, “I’m sure he has. Captain Organa too, I bet.”

            “We all have.”

            She could feel the pull of the drugs wanting to drag her back into unconsciousness. She was too tired to fight, there was no point. She would wake when she needed, but she knew she should let herself be lulled to sleep before the pain her leg prevented her from doing such.

            So, she closed her eyes and let herself fall asleep.

                                                                        ***

            “Somehow a girl knows more than she should about our organization,” Kylo said. His voice was heavily distorted from his mask, he flexed his gloves at his side. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that…would you?”

            The scrawny man before him was shaking. His scarred face was pale, bloodshot eyes darting to and fro instead of focusing on his interrogator. “I swear, man, I don’t know anything about it.”

            Ren cocked his head slightly, brows raised beneath his mask. He didn’t buy this man’s story…not even for a second. “Are you sure about that?”

            “I-I don’t th—”

            He took a step closer to the man, drawing himself up to his full height. “You wouldn’t lying to me, would you?”

            The truth was, he had no idea if the lowlife was actually lying to him or not. However, he did know his type. They were notorious liars and would throw their own children under the bus to save their own hide.

            The man shrank away. His eyes flicked to the First Knight’s gloved hands, one of them held a very sharp and intimidating switchblade. “I didn’t know she was going to squeal to the cops, man. I just thought she was another junkie! I didn’t mean to drop Phasma’s name. It just happened!”

            His hunch had been correct and part of him kind of wished it hadn’t been. He didn’t like dealing with the blood that was second hand to a proper stabbing. Without a word, he reached forward and pulled the man towards him.

            The man was hesitant, eyes wide with fear. Kylo didn’t blame him, he had every right to be afraid.

            They stood close together as though they were sharing a secret and as the man realized what the masked man was doing, the blade slipped between his ribs and twisted.

            Kylo dropped the body, closed the knife, and headed for home. He would clean the blood off his clothing when he returned. Thankfully, he had been quick to do the job and it wasn’t very messy.  That, and back was great at masking messes.

            As he strolled home puffing on a cigarette, he paused to watch the road crew clean up the remains of a motorcycle crash from the street. Something about the ancient paint job was familiar but he couldn’t place it.

            He dismissed it the feeling before someone noticed him watching. Something about it nagged him the entire journey home.


	15. Chapter 15

**_Rey_ ** _, Kylo thought as he observed his surroundings._

_It was dark, a dirt tunnel stretched before him on either direction illuminated only by the bare bulbs that hung from its ceiling. It had a foul musty smell, much like the basement he had growing up. Only, as a child his basement was not nearly as smelly and not nearly as creepy._

_When he had been younger he hadn’t liked to go down there because of the spiders and snakes that occasionally had found their way in. He’d seen too many horror flicks where basements were portals to Hell. Then, when he got older it quit scaring him. Few things scared him anymore._

_Something about this reeking place screamed “ **NO** ” and “ **WRONG**.” It was an oppressive weight that kept telling him he did not belong here. He should dream up away to leave and never come back. That he should force himself awake so when he sat up in bed he could say, “phew! I’m glad I didn’t let that dream carry on.”_

_He couldn’t. He wouldn’t let himself be chased out of his dreams by his own subconscious. Not only that, but Rey was down in this pit somewhere. He could sense it. She needed him._

_He had been told time and time again not only by himself but by his master to let her go. To let her live her own life so she could stay as far away from the First Order and its bullshit as she could. Perhaps if he were smart, he would make himself wake up._

_He stared down the corridor for a long moment, contemplating on the correct course of action. Just as he decided he was going to wake himself up, the lights started to flicker._

_The sense of wrongness intensified. So much so, that he couldn’t make himself move; whether it be from unconsciousness or down the tunnel._

_**Rey**. That sick feeling in his gut intensified and as the lights flickered again, he took a few steps down the hall. _

_The invisible force that was pulling him in her direction pulled harder with more urgency._

_She needed him._

_His hesitant steps grew purposeful as he ventured further down the flickering corridor. He only looked back once and when he did, he discovered that the corridor had sealed shut behind him. He was trapped with only one way out._

_Kylo’s heart started to beat faster as he hastened down the tunnel. He had to get to her. He had to help her. She **needed** him. _

_The lights overhead started to surge a little harder. It was nearly enough to give him a headache._

_He couldn’t focus on that. He had to focus on Rey. He had to find her before anything bad happened to her._

_A door appeared at the end of the tunnel. It was an ancient looking thing, made out of heavy slabs of wood and thick iron bands to hold it together. This place looked like a dungeon._

_The bad feeling grew even further, to the point where his flesh prickled in goosebumps and his hair stood on end._

_The lights started to explode, one by one. They rained showers of sparks down from the ceiling with a pop and a hiss._

_Kylo ducked his head as the lights above his exploded, bathing him in total darkness._

_He held a hand out to the door with uncertainty. He had nowhere to go now, but inside._

_He placed both hands on the door, the wood rough and course beneath his bare hands. Then, he gritted his teeth and pushed for all of his worth._

_It groaned open with a mournful sound, revealing blinding light._

_The wrongness, it was so strong now that he wasn’t even sure he wanted to see what was behind the door._

_He had to._

_He poked his head in the door and the air nearly left his chest._

_The training room that he met Snoke in was empty save for two people. Snoke himself stood with his bald head and straight-backed posture with his back towards the door. His eyes were focused on the restraining chair._

_The very chair that he had strapped Kylo in a few weeks prior._

_And in that chair…screaming through her clenched teeth as her body convulsed with the electric current running through it, was Rey. Her face was tipped back, jaw tight, cords in her neck bulging with pain. Her eyes were pinched shut, heavy bruises beneath them. Cuts scratched her face, her nose puffy and crooked._

_She was screaming, and screaming._

_“ **REY**!”_

***

            Kylo sat up in bed, his hand already reaching for the loaded gun on his nightstand before he realized he had just had a nightmare and there was no real threat.

            He took a deep breath, a tattooed arm reaching up to push his sweaty dark hair out of his face. The dream had felt _wrong_. Very few things could shake him, but this horrid feeling had shaken him right to his very core.

            He was pale and trembling just slightly, so he slipped out of bed and swiped the pack of cigarettes off his coffee table before stepping out onto the balcony. Sometimes, the best way to ease his stress was to have a smoke.

            His mind wandered to Rey, the girl that he had hooked up with on a whim after running into her outside of Maz’s. She was supposed to be an insignificant fuck, just someone to warm his sheets for the night.

            Instead, she had started to plague his thoughts the way a vines overtake a tree. As a way to retaliate, he had gone to Snoke. He had went through some extensive training, but even that couldn’t keep her out of his mind.

            When he was awake he could control his thoughts. He had no abilities to control his dreams.

            He couldn’t rid himself of the bad feeling twisting inside of his gut. He had been blessed with his mother’s fantastic instincts and when something felt wrong, things usually went _very_ wrong.

            The sun was rising over Resistance, bathing the city in hues of gold and pink. The sun streaked off the windows of the nearby buildings blinding him if he turned his head just right.

            He needed to visit Rey. He needed to make sure she was okay.

            Kylo stood up and snubbed out his cigarette on the concrete banister before him, then flicked the filter over the side and watched its descent to the ground.

            He pulled on some black jeans and a t-shirt before taking the hike to her house.

            Her apartment building was just as he remembered. It was dismal on the outside with faded brick, an overflowing ashtray on the stoop, and a mysterious green slime spanning down the side of the building.

            The door opened for him without hesitation and he climbed the three flights of stairs.

            He paused outside her apartment door, his hand briefly skimming over his side in his t-shirt. The last time he had been here, he had woken up on her bed with a cut freshly sewn up with rough stitches. He had kissed in the kitchen, wanting to fuck her right there next to the boiling pot of pasta.

            He would have if she had been anyone else. He had been scared of her, what she made him do. What she made him think. So, he had left her shirtless and confused.

            He hadn’t seen her since.

            Kylo knocked on the door once, twice, three, and four times before his heart started to pick up speed in his chest. Why wasn’t she answering? Was she okay?

            He paused before knocking again, “Rey?”

            Nothing.

            His brain screamed at him as he turned back toward the stairwell, _don’t leave! Don’t leave! Don’t leave_!”

            He had to. There was no way for him to get in.

            Kylo reached for the door and paused as he spotted something of the filthy floor of the hallway. It was just a bobby-pin, brown and long forgotten on the floor.

            No, it wasn’t just a bobby-pin. It was a way for him to get into her apartment, whether she was ignoring him on purpose or not.

            He picked it up and went back to the door. It took him a little longer than four minutes before he managed to twist the knob and only a few seconds later was he crossing the threshold into her apartment.

            Things were very much the same from when he had been there last. It seemed to have a layer of grime that would never be removed no matter how hard she scrubbed, dishes sat piled in the sink, and her bed remained unmade.

            One thing that had changed, however, was the smell. The apartment reeked like something had died and the source of the smell had never been found.

            Kylo remembered when a mouse had died in their heating duct. Their entire house had smelled like death for a week until his father practically ripped the house apart to find it.

            He stepped deeper into the kitchen, his eyes roving the room until it found the trash can sitting at the end of the counter. He leaned over it and took a sniff, grimacing as the putrid scent hit his nostrils.

            It didn’t appear Rey was home. Perhaps she was training for a fight? But there was no way she would have ignored the trash smelling up her cramped apartment.

            He moved away from it, heading for the single bedroom that branched off the kitchen. He frowned when he peeked inside to see it empty. The vase of withered flowers that had been there before was gone, but there were no clothes piled in the corner of her room. It was like all of her laundry disappeared.

            Perhaps she went to do laundry, he tried to convince himself. No…it still didn’t feel right.

            He moved back out to the kitchen and stopped cold when he stepped on something that squished under his shoe. He picked up his foot with a frown and then cringed when he saw the dead mouse lying in the middle of the floor.

            As if the sight of the dead rodent hadn’t been enough to throw him off, the knot that had formed in his stomach had tightened like a noose.

            Something was _very_ wrong. Rey wouldn’t leave something like that lying on her kitchen floor.

            The door burst open with a loud _slam_.

            Kylo whirled around, a hand reaching for the knife he kept on his person at all times. When he spotted the face staring back at him, he couldn’t move.

            He had expected Rey to burst in, perhaps one of her nosy neighbors, or a friend. He had _never_ expected to see Han Solo standing before him, looking just as baffled as he was.

            “Ben?” Han asked in shock, “What are you doing here?”

            Kylo flinched at the sound of his name, taking a step back towards the grimy windows. That wasn’t his name anymore. “I could ask the same of you.”

            “I came to check up on my employee. She hasn’t been to work in days!”

            What a small, small fucking world. Rey worked for his father and had fucked his disloyal and equally disappointing son.

            “Why are you here?” Han demanded, his blue eyes narrowed in suspicion.

            “I haven’t heard anything from Rey in a few days. I came to check on her. We’re, uh, friends.”

            He couldn’t stay here, not with his father. Christ, he hadn’t been in the same room as the man in nearly a decade.

            Kylo took a few steps forward, so he was right in his father’s face. “Move,” he ordered as though he was speaking to one of the Seven instead of the man who had brought him into the world.

            “No. Come home with me, Ben.”

            “I’m not coming home with you. I’m not Ben Solo anymore. I have my own life now and it doesn’t have you in it!” He shouted.

            Han did his best to hide it, but Kylo could see how much the words had hurt him in his eyes.

            “Move.”

            “No.”

            Kylo’s patience was worn down to the bones. He reached out and shoved Han _hard_. He hadn’t meant to hurt him, but years of self-depreciation and self-hatred were burning him up.

            Solo stumbled backwards, out of the door of the tiny apartment and sprawled into the hallway. He sat up, blinking dazedly at his son.

            Before Kylo could take another step, a body hit him from behind at full-force.

            The air was knocked out of his lungs, stars danced across his vision as his head cracked against the floor. His arms were wrenched behind his back and a voice snarled in his ear, “Officer Finn of the Resistance Police Department, you’re under arrest!”

            For the second time in his life, Kylo got to see the disappointment on his mother’s face when he was hauled into the station with his hands cuffed behind his back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd really like to thank everybody and their encouraging words about this story! It means so much to me to hear that some people have read it not only once but TWICE! Holy cow! What did I do to deserve such wonderful readers?!
> 
> I'd like to give a special thanks to poor-queequeg for inspiring me for this chapter and Crimson_Clover for reading and moving me with his/her comments!


	16. Chapter 16

            Hunger was no longer a sensation to Rey; it was now a permanent part of who she was. Time was distorted in this dungeon so she didn’t know exactly how long it had been since she had eaten. All she knew was that she would eat a raw sewer rat if it was presented to her.

            Her arms and shoulders hurt so badly from being tied above her head that it was also becoming a sensation she was familiar with. She wasn’t sure if she was ever going to be able to fight again…if she lived long enough to consider it.

            Her heart ached for Poe. Everything that she was feeling, he had felt for several days before she had been abducted. He was a kind man and didn’t deserve to be trapped here. After all, he was only doing his job. She had tried to bargain for his freedom, but it had been pointless.

            The man was sleeping now. It seemed to be the only thing he had the energy to do anymore.

            “Poe,” Rey hissed. Her voice was impossibly loud in the silence the chamber that held them. “ _Poe_!”

            The police officer lifted his head, peering through his healing bruised eyes to look at her. “Rey?” He croaked. His voice was raspy. The last time they had water had been…several hours ago. “Are you okay?”

            “I’m fine,” she said.

            The truth was, she was in pain. The First Order thugs had tried to question her by threatening her. It hadn’t worked. They had tried to starve her. It hadn’t worked. So, they resulted to the last thing they knew how to do and started to beat her.

            They had what appeared to be a broken broomstick handle and had laced it across her back a dozen times. It wasn’t a whip, it wouldn’t scar. But, it had left dozens of rising welts that had been enflamed and later bruised.

            She still hadn’t given them what they wanted.

            It wasn’t that she was being stubborn. The truth was she really didn’t _know_ the answers to the questions they were asking. She was genuinely ignorant, but they took it as stubbornness.

 

             

            “What d’ya need? Poe slurred, exhausted.

            “Nothing,” she answered. Part of her waking him had been an insurance that he was still alive. The other part was… “I think I have a plan.”

***

The air conditioning was one in the interrogation room, causing goosebumps to rise on his bare arms.

            Kylo stared at them with fierce concentration. If he didn’t look up he didn’t have to acknowledge his parents. If he didn’t acknowledge his parents he didn’t have to face a barrage of snarled questions and accusing tones. Maybe, if he was lucky they would both just give up and leave.

He wasn’t that lucky.

            “Where have you been for all of these years, Ben?” Leia asked. Her tone wasn’t the harsh bark of a police Capitan, instead it was soft, stern, and full of motherly worry.

            Kylo wished she would scream at him instead.

            “Answer your mother,” Han ordered.

            After a pregnant pause, Kylo looked up. Seeing his father with his once young face worn down with craggy creases and a deep-set frown brought back memories from his time before going to jail. Seeing his son as a criminal and going through a divorce had aged him rapidly.

            His mother stood next to Han, her arms crossed over the chest of her uniform. She was frowning too, but it wasn’t nearly as hard as the frown on his father’s face. Deep in her dark eyes glinted the maternal worry that came with being a woman that loved her child above all else. Her expression said she was looking for answers.

            She spoke, “you could have been dead.”

            Kylo let out a bitter snort. “As if you really cared what happened to me after I got out of jail. How many times did you visit me in Juvie, mom? Do you remember?” He paused long enough to watch the guilt flash across her face. It didn’t feel good knowing he had put it there, but he shoved his remorse aside. “It’s a trick question. You never came to visit me in jail. Not even on my birthday.”

            “Ben!” Han snapped, his voice echoing in the tiny room. It was a tone that he had heard when he was younger and even more frequently in his teens. It was the one his father used when he was doing something wrong.

            He flinched at the sound of his real name. He hadn’t been called Ben Solo in years. To hide the fact that hearing his name cut like a blade he said, “Would you just look at this? It’s practically just like the last time I saw you. My disappointed mother and disgusted father. In fact, the only thing missing from this picture is the condescending uncle. Where is my dear old Uncle Luke, anyway?”

            He couldn’t help but sneer his uncle’s name. Whenever he thought of him hot rage coursed through his gut, his hands balled into fists, and his jaw clenched hard enough to ache. He would never forgive his uncle for doing what he had done to him. He had arrested his own nephew; the very boy he had spent countless hours with.

            As much as he hated to admit it, there had been a time when Kylo had wanted nothing more than to be just like his uncle. Now, he just wanted him dead.

            Leia spoke before her ex-husband could. “Don’t be like that, Ben. He was just following the law.”

            “Where…is…he?” He annunciated slowly, spitting the words.

            A shadow passed over her face and he saw her true age. He had always looked up to his mother. She had seemed invincible. Now, her eyes were lined with dark bags and her brow was creased in stress. “He’s gone. In hiding because he was afraid of what you would become when you were in prison. He was afraid you’d find him.”

            Her reply gave him a strange sense of satisfaction. It was nice to know that he was feared enough to make the “great” Luke Skywalker flee the city he had been so adamant about saving.

            “Now, what were you doing in Rey Kenobi’s apartment?”  

            “We’re friends,” Kylo answered in a passive tone. “I was worried about her and wanted to check up on her. I didn’t know that was a crime.”

            “What _is_ a crime is breaking into somebody’s home.”

            He gave her a sadistic smirk, “what? Are you going to send me to prison again, mom? You know, most normally families just send their kids to bed and take away their cellphone privileges.”

            Han took a step forward at the tone in his son’s voice, but was stopped when Leia waved him off. “Have you heard from her lately?”

            “No. Why?”

            Her face appeared to age even further in just a matter of moments.

           Deep inside, he felt a pang of guilt for causing her so much stress. There was little he could do about it while he was shackled to the table.

            “Rey has been missing for several days now,” she said. “Your father can’t contact her and the police can’t find her. We have no leads.”

            Kylo’s mouth was dry. He couldn’t swallow because his tongue was sandpaper in his mouth. She was…missing. Rey was gone. “Is there a chance that she could have just moved away?”

            “No!” Han exclaimed. “No, she was the most dedicated worker I’ve ever had—save for Chewie, of course. The girl was never late a day in her life and she never mentioned anything about leaving.”

            The bad feeling in his gut that he’d had since his dream intensified.

            Rey was _gone_.

            His mother was scrutinizing him with a frown, her eyes roaming over every inch of his face. She would be able to tell immediately if something was wrong. “Ben…how close were you to this girl?”

            “We saw each other a couple of times.” _I can’t stop thinking about her_ , he added silently.

            “Did she ever tell you or anyone else that she was helping us get to the bottom of the First Order gang? Do you know anything about that?”

            For a fraction of a second he thought his mom was telling him that she knew of his involvement in the First Order. Then he realized that was impossible. He was careful, _so_ careful. He wore gloves, a helmet, long sleeves, and left no evidence. Then her words hit him. “ _What_? What do you mean

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Duh, duh, duuuuuhhhhhh! The plot thickens!
> 
> Once again, thank you all for your support! A special shout out to Jinga for being awesome!
> 
> (I love all of you equally, just so you know!)


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I banged this chapter out rather quickly and was falling asleep while writing it. I'm exhausted, so it's unedited. I apologize for any mistakes beforehand.

 

            The heavy steel door at the opposite end of the basement groaned open. Rey jerked awake in her restraints, eyes straining as the lights turned on. It took a few blinks for her eyes to adjust to the sudden brightness, but when they did she wished she hadn’t.

            Standing just inside the door was a figure dressed in black from head to toe. His face and head was covered by a heavy looking helmet that made him look robotic and terrifying.

            What was even scarier about this stranger was the way he carried himself. He walked in a way that would make women cross the street to avoid him and hide their babies. He was very obviously a man who got what he wanted and he didn’t care how he acquired it.

            “Let the girl go, Ren. She didn’t have anything to do with this!” Poe pleaded. His voice cracked from dehydration and emotions.

            The man turned and faced him and Officer Dameron shrank back as though the man’s helmet could shoot lasers. They stared at each other for much too long, before the man known as Ren turned his attention back to Rey.

            Rey stared at him, her heart beating in her ears. She could only hear the sound of her own breathing.

            “The girl I’ve heard so much about,” Ren said as he stood before her. His hands were clasped neatly behind his back. His body leaned slightly forward as if he were restraining himself from moving any closer. There was no sign of emotion in the mechanical voice that came from the helmet.

            Rey didn’t respond. What was she supposed to say? Was she supposed to apologize for being a rat or did he expect some other sort of favor? Perhaps, he wanted nothing.

            “Tell me, why were you trying to dig up information about the First Order?”

            “Why do you care?”

            The masked figure tilted his head slightly, as if to consider her question for just a few moments. “It’s my job to care.”

            She felt anger send a hot tingle down her spine. She set her jaw and tried not to curse in frustration. She knew that, obviously. “It’s my job to be a bloody mechanic, not to be tied up in some filthy dungeon awaiting a cruel and harsh death.”

            “What were you doing scavenging for things that you had no business being involved in?” His voice was tight with frustration behind the mask.

            “I made a deal with the cops to avoid going to prison.” She spat through her teeth.

            The masked figure regarded her silently briefly. She could feel his eyes roaming up and down her face.  “You’re so angry. You want to kill me.”

            The words flung from her mouth before she could stop them, harsh and cold. “That’s what happens when you’ve been abducted by a bunch of goons, tortured, starved, and—and— _hunted_ by some creature in a mask!”

            The man stilled, hardly even breathing.

            If she could have kicked herself for the audacity of her words she would have. She blinked a few times, palms sweating and body shaking with fear. What had she done? He was definitely going to kill her now.

            The man in black reached up slowly and thumbed a switch on the helmet. It opened with a formidable hiss and he slowly started to lift it from his face. Only when it was tucked neatly beneath his arm did she have the courage to actually look at the monster before her.

            Was his face going to be scarred and deformed? Would he have eyelids? Would his face be dotted with scars of using?

            She picked up her head and studied him once, twice, and three times before she realized that her mind was not playing tricks on her. “ _Kylo_?”

            “Rey,” he said. His voice was neutral, if not a little bit harsher than anticipated.

            Rey wanted to scream and yank against the ropes binding her. He was there, he was the dark cloaked man that Poe had told her tortured him. _He_ was the man in black that had killed somebody the night she had gotten arrested in the boxing ring.

            He was a _murderer_

            “Don’t call me that!” She barked, leaning forward as though she could free herself from her bonds and gritted her teeth in his face. If she wasn’t being held captive she would have kicked his ass to the moon (maybe even further).

            “Fine, _Scavenger_.” He said, his voice full of malice and disdain.

            This was the man that had tortured Poe. 

            “You’re lonely down here,” he said. “So lonely. In fact, I think you’ve been lonely your entire life.”

            “You know nothing about me.”

            “Very true, I suppose.”

            They stood in silence, tension thick between them.

            “Why are you here?”

            Rey could see the wheels and gears turning within his head. Then he answered, “I’m here to…extract as much information about you before—”

            If she wasn’t mistaken, his voice broke slightly. “Before what?” She demanded.

            “Before they kill you.” Kylo answered.

            Rey gawked at him. She had already told the First Order everything they knew. Unless the First Order thought she was lying to them. She closed her mouth with an audible snap. “What if I don’t want to talk?”

            “I guess you could say my specialties are people who don’t want to talk. I assure that I can be _very_ persuasive.”

            Rey yanked on her ropes, making the chain rattle above her head. “Why don’t you just kill me already? You already know what I’ve done!”

            Something swept over Kylo’s face, but it was gone in an instant. He had smoothed out his features and made them look unexpressive. Then, he put on his helmet and latched it before heading out the door.

            Once the door was firmly shut behind him, Rey started to struggle even more against her restraints, but it was useless.

            “What about your plan?” Poe asked.

            “I’ll fulfill it soon,” she promised.

***

            Hours later, the door creaked open again. It wasn’t Kylo Ren who had come to interrogate them this time. It was a couple of goons. They all looked the same to her now, with shaved heads, tattoos, and a douchebag aura around them.

            However, one of them had one asset that she was counting on.

            “You’re not sending in your fearless masked leader to ‘put me in my place’?” Rey asked, with a raised eyebrow.

            “Ren?” One asked, a cigarette bobbing between his lips. He let out a dry laugh that almost sounded like a cough. “He pussed out earlier. Apparently he has reservations about hitting girls. Just wait until Snoke gets done with him, though. You just wait.”

            She wondered just exactly who this Snoke person was. It was a name that she had heard whispered among the various men as though it was a curse. Whoever he was, she knew most of them were afraid of him.

            Her heart contracted at the thought of Kylo getting hurt, but then she remembered who he was. She made herself turn that fear into rage. He deserved every ounce of pain he got. “What’s he going to do to him?”

            The man with the cigarette came closer, a grin stretching across his face, revealing his rotting teeth. “Snoke is going to beat him bloody.”

            Rey cringed and swallowed. She eyed the cigarette briefly, but the men were turning to leave. “Wait!” She called out.

            They paused.

            “Can I bum a smoke from you? It looks like a good time to pick up old habits again.”

            The man sauntered over and stuck the filter of a fresh cigarette between her lips before lighting it for her. “Go for it, girl. Don’t burn yourself when you spit the filter out.”

            _I’ll try my best_ , Rey thought victoriously.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the hiatus! I'm in school Monday-Thursday and was working Thursday-Sunday up until this week. The good news is that I'm going on a break starting Wednesday, so I'm hoping to post next week and maybe the week after too. I'll update as frequently as I can. 
> 
> Also, this part chapter was written while I was half-asleep yesterday so I'm sorry for any mistakes or if it doesn't make sense.

_Rey knew_ , Kylo thought as he stood in the middle of his apartment. Nervous energy hummed through his veins and made his skin itch. She knew the truth about him. She knew who he was and what he did.

            _Why_ had he taken the mask off? _Why_ had he revealed who he truly was to her? _Why, why, why?_

            What was he supposed to do now? Snoke was going to beat the piss out of him, send him into days—perhaps weeks—of super intense training that would make him forget what it was completely like to be in his very own skin.

            He clenched his fists, sucking in deep breaths as he tried to keep himself from spontaneously combusting. Too much had happened over the past few days.

He’d had a not-so-happy family reunion with his parents, he’d defied direct orders from Master Snoke, found out Rey was in captivity, and revealed himself to her.

            His master didn’t trust him and posted Phasma in his apartment to keep an eye on him; should he do anything else to endanger himself or the First Order.

            He was going explode and he couldn’t hold it in any longer. If he did, he may fling himself from his balcony just to get the hell out of his head and skin.

            Kylo let out a roar of rage and swept his arm across the coffee table, sending magazines and books crashing to the floor. Self-loathing coursed through him, Rey had trusted him and he was nothing but a monster.

            Grunting, he smashed his foot into the table, kicking it over with a bang. He moved to the kitchen and grabbed the nearest coffee mug and hurling it at the wall, where it not only shattered but put a gaping hole in the tan painted drywall.

            He stared at it. It was ugly and dark with a gaping, taunting maw. He _hated_ it.

            With a snarl, he grabbed the hole with his bare hands and gave it a good yank, ensuring a chunk broke off in his hand. There was something satisfying about having plaster break free in his hand.

            He grabbed another handful, then another, and another until he was short of breath and sweating.

            He stared at his dust covered hands, they were bloody and scratched

            “What the hell are you doing, Ren?” Phasma demanded as she pulled open the door. Judging from the tone in her voice she disgusted and felt some empathy for him at the same time.

            “I’m ridding myself of unnecessary stress,” Kylo informed her in a clipped tone.

            Her blue eyes raked over him from the top of his dusty dark hair all the way down to where he was kneeling among chunks of plaster in his raggedy old sweatpants. “Normal people go to the gym or a jog. You…destroy your home.”

            Kylo stood and clenched his knuckles, feeling the warmth of his blood dropping from them to the polished wooden floor. “Housekeeping will clean it up.”

            Phasma made a skeptical sound and reached down to pick up a book that had been lying face-down on the floor, the pages inside all broken and bent from the impact it had with the floor. “Do I dare ask what has you so riled up?”

            His voice was hard and almost predatory when he answered with a firm “no”.

            “Alright, I won’t ask then.” Phasma stepped over glass shards from the mug and stepped onto the balcony. She lit a cigarette and took a few deep nicotine-filled breaths as he eyes watched the glowing of the traffic beneath her on the street.

            Kylo paused before stepping out to join her. The stone floor of the balcony was cold against his feet, the night breeze was warm against his shirtless and tattooed skin. He lit a cigarette himself.

            “Are you nervous?”

            “About what?”

            She looked at him, a blonde brow arched with skepticism. “Aren’t you nervous about what Snoke is going to say or do to you? Isn’t that what you’re worried about?”

            “No.”

            The truth wasn’t as black and white as that. There were certain aspects of being under Snoke’s thumb has done for him. He enjoyed being able to separate himself from his work (murder wasn’t an easy task and could take an emotional toll of just about anyone). He enjoyed the sense of power he’d gotten when working for him.

            There was another side to the coin; even though he liked being able to separate himself from his work didn’t mean he was _good_ at it. Just because he sought out help keeping the two apart, it also didn’t mean his teacher knew when to stop. Some of his training was so difficult and intense that he often forgot who he was and for several days knew hardly anything but his name and what his purpose was within the First Order.

            The street below became quickly alive with the shriek of sirens and the red halos of flashing lights as sever firetrucks zoomed past, horns blasting. They were quickly followed by a few police cars racing by as well.

            Kylo didn’t say anything, but Phasma did. “There must be an accident somewhere…or a fire.” She stubbed out her cigarette and flicked it over the edge.

            He didn’t feel like talking—or being in her company for that matter—so he contemplated what to do about Rey. He had to get her out of there, but he couldn’t disobey orders. Heaven forbid any of the Seven got their hands on her. She’d be dead.

            Thinking about her bound up, bruised, and the loathing in her eyes gave him the itch to smoke. So, he pulled a cigarette out of the pack and stuck it between his lips.

            He just got a taste of the filter against his lips when Phasma’s phone rang.

            “Yes?” She asked, voice professional and crisp like it typically was. Her blue eyes widened and she took a shocked step back. Her voice was no longer professional when she spoke again. Instead, she was shocked and horrified, “ _what_? Jesus, okay. Keep me informed.” She hung up.

            Kylo raised a brow at her. What could make Phasma break her composure? It had to be something pretty severe because she was a woman who had faced many hardships, scared thugs, murderers, and thieves.

            “Snoke’s safe house is on fire.”

            “What?” He asked, stunned.

            Snoke’s safe house was the place where his Master worked from, where Kylo had attended all of his training sessions, where the captors were held, where…where _Rey_ was.

            “We have to go,” he said as he threw open the door to the balcony and marched inside. He tore of his sweatpants and pulled on a pair of jeans, snagged a black sweater from his bedroom floor, and crammed his feet into his boots.

            Rey was in that building, trapped in the basement. She was going to die if she hadn’t already. He could just imagine her choking on smoke, burning alive, screaming…

            “Ren, where do you think you’re going?”

            He didn’t pause as he grabbed the gun from his nightstand and ensured it was loaded before sticking in the waistband of his pants. He grabbed a knife from his drawer and hooked it to his belt. “The Supreme leader is in danger. It’s my job to protect him.”

            “You can’t just leave. I am under strict orders to keep you here until you’re summoned!”

            “Feel free to stop me, Phasma.” With those words he cocked the gun, shot her in the leg and walked out the door.

 

***

            “You’re pretty smart, kid.” Poe told her as she reached as high as she could to untie the bonds that suspended his arms around his head. “I’m just wondering how you planned to get us out of this burning building alive.”

            She hadn’t really thought about what could happen when she had dropped her smoldering restraints and the cigarette but to the trash-strewn floor of their small prison.

            She had used her upper body strength to pull herself up again and again so she could press the burning end of the cigarette to the ropes holding her wrists until they had singed away.

            Her wrists had some burns on them but she was free.

            Now the entire basement was fill with smoke. Flames had caught the old newspapers and fast food wrappers on fire and had sent flames licking up the walls.

            Rey coughed, eyes burning as she squinted through the smoke. Her fingers trembled as she worked the knots free.

            Poe collapsed onto the filthy floor, coughing hard as he did so. When he finished, he looked at her with eyes rimmed with red from the smoke. “We have to get out of here.”

            “Every—” She paused to cough. The harsh gestured made her ribs ache and nausea rise within her. “Everything is locked!”

            The smoke was getting thick now, the flames crackling, the building moaning and groaning beneath the weight of the ruined structure.

            Her head ached. She couldn’t breathe.

            “Rey,” Poe said, his voice raspy. “Rey, don’t think we’re going to make it.”

            No sooner had the words left his mouth did the door slam open to reveal a tall, slim figure silhouetted by the fire.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to update tonight because I'm going to Gettysburg on Thursday and I won't be home until Sunday! 
> 
> Sorry for any errors, this chapter is not edited.

            The sound of wheels against blacktop pulled her out of sleep. Where was she?

            Opening her eyes, Rey stared out the window. Landscape flew by, the interstate cut through the side of the hills, snaking and curving up ahead.

            Where was she? Who was driving?

            She turned her head and a feral sound ripped from her throat when she saw Kylo lounging in the driver’s seat, long fingers curled around the steering wheel. “What in the hell are you doing here? Let me out of this car right now!”

            He glanced at her, tension clear in his posture and gaze. He didn’t respond. Instead, he flicked on the radio and pressed his foot down even harder on the accelerator.

            Rey felt her anger come to a boil and she reached up and jabbed the button. Her throat ached from smoke inhalation but that didn’t keep her from snapping, “answer me, you monster! What am I doing here? Where are we? Where is Poe?”

            For a few long moments it seemed as though Kylo wasn’t going to answer her, which only frustrated her further. Just as she was about to snap once more he said, “Your police officer friend is fine. He’s resting back in Resistance General Hospital. We are heading as far away from there as possible under the orders of Captain Organa of the RCPD.”

            “Why are you here? The last time I saw you, you were prepared to kill both Poe and me because you were ordered to. Now you helped me escape and are taking me somewhere else? That doesn’t make any sense!”

            “You should probably talk less,” he answered simply.

            Rey grit her teeth so hard it hurt. She crossed her arms over her narrow chest and glared at him with enough fire that the heat was comparable to the surface of the sun. “You were going to kill me!”

            “I never raised a hand to you!” He barked back. His knuckles turned white as his grip on the steering wheel intensified.

            “You threatened me! And if before that you told me you didn’t want me anymore. Which, I’m kind of thankful for now that this has all transpired.”

            They were harsh words and she smirked in satisfaction when he flinched like she had struck him. It was nice to know that she had somehow managed to ruffle his feathers, even if it had only been slightly.

            Without responding he turned on the radio once more and the sound of classical music filled the cab of the luxury car. He closed his eyes briefly before letting them open and focus on the road ahead.

            There were dark circles under his brown eyes, his dark hair was messy, there were burns, scrapes, and bruises along his knuckles, hands, and wrists until they vanished beneath the sleeves of his black sweater.

            _Why_? She wondered, _why did he come back for her_? _Why did he save her if he had planned on killing her anyway_?

            She didn’t have the answers and she wanted to ask, but she wasn’t so sure it was a good idea. Not with the tension that was radiating off of him.

            He finally spoke, “Why did you do it? Why did you tell the department that you would spy for them? Stars, Rey. That’s so dangerous!”

            “I did it because I didn’t want to get arrested. You know I’m a boxer. It was all illegal and they promised to wipe my record clean. I didn’t think I would be getting as involved as I did.” It was irritating to her that he was giving her the fifth degree about her involvement with the police department when he was associating himself with a mafia that was notorious for drugs and killing people. “What about you?” She grilled, “why were you involved with the First Order, licking Snoke’s boots and doing his dirty work?”

            _That_ also struck a nerve with him, she was pleased to note.

            Through clenched teeth he answered, venom dripping from his words. “I told you Snoke offered me a deal that was too good to refuse. I killed for him, kept his thugs in line, and in return he gave me a place to sleep, food, and a salary. It’s what I’m good at.”

            “Make sure you list ‘torture’ beneath your special skills section on your resume.”

            Kylo combed a hand through his hair and he let out a strangled sounding breath. Something more was going on with him and she wanted to know what it was. She wanted to know but she also didn’t want him to think she cared. She was royally pissed off at him and would stay that way until she died…if she were lucky.

            “Snoke isn’t dead,” he finally said.

            Hearing that made her freeze. Her heart beat a little faster in her chest and her palms started to grow clammy. What did he mean? Wasn’t that man part of a fire? How could he still be alive?

            Sensing her questions and anxiety he said, “I just know he isn’t. I don’t know how he didn’t get caught up in that fire with the rest of the men that were in there, but he and Hux managed to get out alive.”

            “Aren’t you lucky,” she snipped. “I heard the job market is horrible for assassins if he were gone I don’t know what you would have done.”

            “He doesn’t know I’m here.”

            Rey was about to respond with another smart comment but then the massive meaning behind those five words hit her.

            _Snoke didn’t know Kylo was with her. He didn’t know Kylo had abandoned him. He didn’t know she was alive. Kylo abandoned everything he knew._

            She let those four facts sink in as the piano trilled overhead along with the melancholy song of the violin. She didn’t know the song, but it seemed fitting that he would listen to classical music.

            “Why did you go to him?”

            Kylo sighed and sank deeper into black leather seat of the rental car. “I was in prison as a kid—that was true. I gathered quite the reputation while I was in. I didn’t purposely pick fights with inmates but I would be the first one to finish them. My mother and father were disgusted with me and the creature I had become. They never came to visit. Ultimately, Snoke was there for me when nobody else was.”

            Rey had never known her own parents. She had been in the foster system for as long as she could remember. She did have a slight memory of her mother and father dropping her off at an orphanage, she could hear her mother’s voice promising to return, and it never happened.

            She had bounced from home to home, learning how to be a scrappy fighter for her small size. She’d been bullied and picked on for years until an older man and woman took her in. The older man taught her about engines and how things worked.

            It was something she had taken with her on her journey through adolescence and into adulthood. It had been the knowledge he had passed down to her that had landed her a job at Solo’s Salvage.

            “I’m sorry to hear about that, but I don’t think it gives you an excuse to be a murderer,” she finally replied.

            “I know.”

            She itched to know more about the life he’d worked so hard to keep a secret from her. Then again, she felt as though ignorance would be bliss in this particular situation. However, curiosity had always been her Achilles heel and she found herself asking, “how many people have you killed?”

            “Dozens.”

            She winced, “I’ll forget I asked.”

            “For your sake and mine it’s best that you do.”

            Rey crossed her arms and glared out the window, “just because I’m talking to you don’t think it means that I’m still not angry with you.”

            This seemed to amuse him and he let out a soft chuckle. “How long will you be mad at me?”

            “Forever if I can help it.”

           

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is some more of Rey's backstory! I feel like the plot will start to become more fun and interesting now that they're stuck together for an undetermined length of time. Thank goodness! I was starting to feel as though this story is getting very...stagnant. 
> 
> Thank you all my lovelies for all of your support!


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M A HORRIBLE FIC-MOM AND I AM SO SORRY!

She was mad at him and he could somewhat understand why. However, no matter how much he had threatened her and hurt her little cop friend, both of them were still alive because of him. Shouldn’t she at least be a little gratuitous toward him? 

He chanced a look at her out of the corner of his eye. 

Rey was sitting in the passenger seat with her knees tucked up to her chin as she stared out the window at the rapidly passing foliage. She looked like she had been through a war. Bruises blotched her skin, her hair was ratty, and she had some dried blood on her clothes.

He fixed his attention back on the barren roadway when he felt the sickening twist of guilt in his gut. It was partially his fault. The men that had beat her and tortured her had been trained by  _ him _ , they had taken orders from  _ him _ .

The gritty whine of the violin was starting to grate on his nerves. He reached up and flipped through stations until he found some smooth jazz to ease his mind. 

Where were they going to go? There was no place that they could run that Snoke wouldn’t find them. What was he going to do with Rey? She wasn’t going to want to be with him for any longer than necessary and she was in danger if he could ensure they weren’t being followed. What was going to happen to him? He could take a guess and the odds weren’t in his favor. 

“Tatooine?” Rey asked sitting up straight suddenly as a sign announcing the next exit’s arrival neared. “Stop there! I need to say...goodbye to someone.” 

Kylo glanced at her, a brow raised. Being ordered around was a new concept to him. To top it off, being ordered around by a girl who scarcely weighed one hundred pounds was downright bizarre.

“We aren’t stopping. We don’t have time.” They had to keep moving before the First Order had time to begin their search for them. 

“We’re stopping!” She growled through her bared teeth. 

“What could possibly be more important that getting you to safety?” 

“You didn’t seem too concerned about my safety when I was chained up in a basement. Why start now?” 

He felt his jaw twitch at that particular statement. “Give me three good reasons why I should take this next exit. They better be damned good because I’m not stopping unless we have to.” 

She held up three fingers, dropping each one as she listed reasons to stop, “One, because he has a garage we can park the car in while we’re there. Two, he has a shower and I’d like to get this filth off of me. And three, I don’t hate everybody I know...unlike  _ you _ .”

As much as Kylo hated to admit it, she did have a good point. She was filthy, smelling of burnt hair and who-knows-what from being trapped in that dungeon. She needed to wash the blood and filth off of her skin. If there was a chance nobody would see the car from the street they would be safe for an hour or two. 

He pretended he didn’t notice her victorious smirk as he merged onto the off ramp. 

Ten minutes later he was pulling into a dilapidated garage outside of an unimpressive house on a silent street. Rey was already heading for the front door of the tan house before he had the garage door pulled shut. 

The screen door creaked open and then banged shut. Somebody walked down the front porch steps began crossing the lawn. 

“Lucas!” Rey exclaimed as she limped quickly towards him. 

Kylo dusted his hands off on his black jeans and turned around to face the two of them. When he saw ‘Lucas’ he froze in place.

Luke Skywalker was not the man that he remembered. He remembered his uncle younger, blonder, and his face pinched with disappointment as he watched his only nephew get sentenced to years in prison. 

The man standing before him was grey, lines were worn into his once youthful face, but the look of disappointment was still hidden deep in those blue eyes. All Luke could do was stare. 

Kylo stared back at his uncle, his large frame rigid, his face growing colder and harder by the second. So many thoughts were running through his mind; this was the man he’d looked up to as a child, this was the man who had damned him, the man who had watched his world fall apart and did  _ nothing _ . 

Rey, sensing the tension between the two of them, stopped halfway between the two men. Her eyes widened and then narrowed as she tried to piece together where the tension was coming from. 

Luke’s voice was emotionless as he said, “Ben.” 

Those three letters, the name he had been given at birth, hearing them from his uncle’s mouth caused something inside him to snap. A feral snarl ripped from his throat as he stormed across the unkempt lawn towards Skywalker. “ _ You _ ,” he growled. 

“Kylo!” Rey exclaimed as he passed her. She reached for his sweater, but he just kept walking. She was too sore and injured to keep up with him. 

“You son of a bitch!” Kylo grabbed Luke’s sweater and used it to drive him backwards towards the house. “You bastard!” He heard the air whoosh out of his uncle’s lungs as he shoved him against the house. “Because of  _ you _ my life has been a living hell! You ruined everything! Because of you my parents got divorced,” he shook him, blind with rage, “Because of  _ you _ I ended up in prison!” 

“ _ Kylo _ !” Rey shouted in his ear, her blunted fingernails clawing at his arm, his back, pulling at his long hair as she tried to get him off her trainer. “Get off of him!” 

He was shaking, his face red as he leaned in close to his uncle’s ear. He snarled in a voice trembling with rage, “And don’t you ever,  _ ever _ call me  _ Ben _ again!”


	21. Twenty-One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I've been a bad fic-parent! To be honest, with school and work I had just lost inspiration (and time) to write. Now, I've moved eight hours from home to do my internship at a hospital. Since I am no longer commuting two hours every single day, I now have time to write again! I hope to update this fic fairly often. 
> 
> Sorry if there are mistakes as I'm very rusty!

Luke’s small house was packed with all kinds of clutter. There were odds and ends of assorted things. There was a stack of newspapers on the kitchen table, yellowed with age. There was a collection of dust bunnies in the corner of the room and when Rey turned on the shower the pipes had squealed like a pinched baby.

Kylo wondered what had happened to the uncle he used to know; the one who kept his things immaculate, was dedicated to his looks, and what people thought of him.

Once again he felt like he was a teenager forced to spend another night with Uncle Luke while his dad went seeking glory on the drag strip and his mother worked long nights at her desk. 

No, he felt like he was on trial again but instead of being faced with a judge and jury he was faced with his solemn-faced uncle. It was almost as bad...if not worse.

Kylo hadn’t always hated his uncle. No, at one point he had looked up to him. When he had been a kid he had wanted desperately to  _ be _ him. His uncle had been a police officer. He had caught bad guys and saved the day. His mother had too, of course, but she wasn’t Uncle Luke. 

He could remember sitting in the passenger seat of his Uncle’s cruiser, his police cap sitting low over his dark eyes, his big ears sticking out from beneath it. He remembered wearing a little plastic badge his uncle had given him. He’d cherished the prize so much that he had worn it for three months proudly displayed on his breast until the pin had snapped and it had been tossed out. It had been devastating for him.

Now, he sat perfectly still in his uncle’s kitchen with an untouched cup of tea steaming in front of him. His dark eyes didn’t leave Luke’s blue ones. He said nothing. 

It appeared that his uncle had let himself go after fleeing Resistance. In his old age, lines creased the soft skin of his face, an unkept and scraggly beard hung about his chin. The dark circles under his eyes suggested he had trouble sleeping. His once almost life-like prosthetic hand had been replaced with one that was just as functional but was just a metal skeleton on the nub of his wrist. 

He could still see the disappointment in his uncle’s eyes. 

Now, he was transported back into a different moment in time, one where just him and his buddies had been having fun. They weren’t supposed to get caught, yet Luke had come home early and found them. He could still remember feeling confused and scared. Luke had tackled him to the floor to cuff him. It still felt like it had happened to someone else. 

Luke was the first one to speak, “what happened to you? You’re not the nephew that I remember.” 

Kylo felt his lips turn up into a tortured smile. “A man I used to look up to had me incarcerated when I experimented with drugs for the first time. While I was in juvie, I got stabbed, and from then on I decided to destroy those who ever tried to hurt me again.” 

“I know. Why do you think I left the city?” 

“Because you were scared I’d come for you.” 

“I was. I was afraid of what I’d have to do to defend myself against you.” 

Kylo let out a low, dark chuckle. “If you want to take your shot, old man, go right ahead. I’m not afraid of you.”

Something in his face darkened, displeased with this information. “Ben, I--” 

“ _ Don’t call me that _ !” He snarled, pounding his fist on the rickety table hard enough to cause tea to jump out of the cup. “I will kill you with this spoon and trust me, I have killed men with far less!” 

He could see the fear in Luke’s eyes, although the older man was good at hiding it. 

“Ben Solo died the moment he realized his parents weren’t ever coming to visit him in prison.” 

He heard the squeaking of the pipes as the water in the bathroom turned off. Rey must have finished with her shower. 

“What are you going to do with Rey?” His uncle asked. 

“I’m taking her to safety.” 

“How...how did you two even meet?” 

Kylo remembered that night in front of Maz’s that seemed to be ages ago. He remembered her landing a very well-placed and solid punch in Plutt’s round face. He remembered the feel of her hands around his waist as he drove her motorcycle to his home, the burn of her bare skin against his lips, and how he had felt more alive than ever that night. 

Finally he answered, “we met at a bar. I suppose I could ask you the same thing.” 

Luke was quiet for several moments, caught up in a memory just as Kylo had been. “I met her at a diner at three in the morning. She was covered in bruises and looked like she had lost a fight. I offered to teach her how to box.” 

It was such a peculiar thing that everyone in his life was somehow tied to this girl. She had worked for his father, she had done a deal with his mother to keep herself out of prison, she had been a prisoner in Snoke’s possession, and now she knew Luke. She was so tangled in his tragic life and she had no idea. 

“You love her, don’t you?” 

Kylo stared as the tea that had sloshed out of his cup soaked into the newspapers next to him, muddying up the paper and blurring the print.

No, he didn’t love her! At least, he didn’t think he did. Love was a very dangerous thing for him. Everyone he loved ended up hurt in some way or another. His parents, his uncle, his friends...all of their lives had been ruined because of him. 

“It’s my job to make sure she stays safe.” He had given the most honest answer he could. She was in trouble because of him. Snoke knew he had feelings for her and that put a huge target on her back. Because of his betrayal, it made that target even larger. He was going to find some place safe for her in this country or the next and stay out of her life forever. 

Luke stared at him. Something about the look of knowing on his face told Kylo that he could see right through his nephew. He wasn’t fooling him. He had known him since birth and knew him better than just about everyone. “Where are you going to take her?” 

“As far away from here as I can. If I don’t get her somewhere safe she will be killed.” 

“Out of the country?” 

“If that’s what it takes.” 

“Well you won’t be able to get her out over night. You’re going to need someplace safe to stay until you can.” The man heaved himself out of his groaning chair. Moved to a dusty bookshelf and started run his fingers across the tops of the dusty books. 

Kylo didn’t move as he watched him. He did notice with some satisfaction that his beloved uncle carried a few extra pounds than he had when he was younger. There was a place he had thought about going to, but he hadn’t been there since he was fourteen. He didn’t have the keys and wasn’t even sure he would be able to get his car up the access road to get there. 

“Your father gave me these right before you got out of prison,” Luke said. “He didn’t want you taking them and breaking in. He figured they’d be safe with me.” He held something in his palm and blew on it to blow the dust off. Then, he held it between his thumb and forefinger for him to see. 

Kylo stared at the keys hanging on a rusted ring in his uncle’s fingers. There was some sort of theory about the law of attraction. It stated something like “thinking about something can often manifest it into your everyday life”. It was strange how it worked sometimes. 

“It’s for the cabin.” 

Kylo held out his palm and watched as the keys were dropped into it. He wordlessly closed them in his fist before stuffing them in his pocket. 

The door to the bathroom creaked open and Rey hobbled out on a pair of crutches she had borrowed from Luke. Her face was scrubbed free of soot and blood, only faded bruises and freckles lingered. Her hair hung in wet strands down around her shoulders, soaking into the fabric of the borrowed tee shirt that was too big. 

She eased herself into a chair next to Kylo and propped her leg on the one Luke had previously occupied. “I see that both of you are still alive. I’ll take that as good sign. Now, who wants to help me wrap this kriffing ankle?”


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update! I'm studying for my boards and trying to finish tweaking my book so I can self-publish it.   
> I hope you enjoy this chapter, lovelies!

Rey was getting fed up with Kylo. She had been fed up with him since she regained consciousness in his car the day before. Now, however, she was at her wit’s end. Her ankle was throbbing, she had to pee, and sleeping in the car--no matter how luxurious the seats were--was giving her a knot in the back of her neck. 

“Can we at least stop at that gas station so I can pee?” She asked, her arms crossed irritably over her chest. 

He gave her a sideways glance. His voice was strained as he responded, “I told you we aren’t stopping until we absolutely have to.” 

“Unless you want me to soil these very nice seats I suggest you pull over.” 

His long fingers gripped tighter on the steering wheel and he changed lanes to pass a truck and the next exit.

“You’re miserable, you know that? I liked you better when you were a psychotic murderer.” 

Kylo’s jaw twitched and he pressed his foot down the accelerator. 

“Is that not what you were?” She asked. She knew the question would prod his buttons even further. Maybe if she annoyed him enough he would pull over so she could grab something to eat and use the restroom. 

God, she was starving! They had eaten at Lucas-- _ Luke’s _ house, but that had been almost ten hours ago. Besides, a turkey sandwich could only hold a girl over for so long. 

“You could at least tell me where we’re going,” she said.

“My parents have a cabin in the north.” 

“Oh, did you go spend your summers there? Is that where your dad took you to teach you the values of a man? Did he give you life lessons while you chopped firewood and went fishing on a lake?” There was a hint of amusement in her tone. 

“No, not really.” He frowned a little and looked at her, “You know my father. He isn’t that type.” 

She blinked and racked her brain, trying to figure out who his father could be. He had never told her much about him except for the fact that his parents were divorced and they hadn’t visited him in jail. “I do?” 

A small grin touched his lips but it was gone just as quickly as it had appeared. “You were my father’s favorite employee, aside from Chewbacca, of course.” 

Rey stared at him open-mouthed. Was he saying his father was Han Solo? Now that he mentioned it, she could see little resemblances between the two; his prominent nose, the shape of his face, and the line of his lips. Why hadn’t Han ever talked about having a son? In fact, he never talked about his ex-wife. He only ever talked about his life outrunning the cops when he and Chewie had roasted tires on an empty street. 

“Your dad is Han Solo?” She finally asked carefully. 

Kylo said nothing but nodded once slowly. 

“He never...he never said anything about having a son. I just assumed he had never settled down.” 

A quick flash of something flickered through his eyes. He didn’t respond right away. “I’m not surprised that he doesn’t talk about me often. It’s better to pretend the family disappointment doesn’t exist, right?” 

“You’re not a disappointment!” She objected before she could stop herself. She felt foolish for saying it aloud. Of course his parents were disappointed in his past, but family wasn’t supposed to give up on each other, right? She wouldn’t know, she had spent her entire life in the foster system. But, from what she had read in books and watched on television, family was supposed to stick together no matter what. 

“After being thrown into jail by my own uncle, causing a rift between my parents so deep they divorced, joining up with a mobster, and killing people, they don’t exactly greet me with open arms.” His voice was quiet over the low smooth sound of jazz pouring from the speakers of the car as he said, “besides, my father and I didn’t get along anyways.” 

Rey wondered who his mother was. He never quite talked about her and neither had Han. “So, if he’s your dad...who is your mom?” 

This question seemed to surprise him because he looked at her with slightly raised brows before schooling his features back into a neutral look. “You know her too.” 

“I do?” 

“Captain Organa of the Resistance Police Department?” 

Leia? Leia was his mother? The similarities were fewer between the two but they were there. He had her dark hair, her beauty marks, and her dark eyes. 

“You’re more wrapped up in my life than you realize,” he informed her. 

“I can tell,” she muttered back before crossing her arms. 

“The ironic part of it, is that you have a better relationship with both of my parents than I do.” 

She didn’t know how to respond to that. She wasn’t going to apologize for accidentally winding up involved with his mother, his father,  _ and _ his uncle. However, he was very right. Rey hadn’t realized how tangled up in it she was. Now, she she was even more tangled up in it than she had been previously. 

“Listen,” she finally said as she saw a sign for a gas station two exits down, “if you don’t let me out I’m going to piss my pants in this car. Trust me, no matter how much you scrub the seats after, you’ll still smell it every time you turn the seat warmers on.” 

He gave her a look that told her was annoyed with her pestering him. He switched lanes and turned his signal on for the exit. 

“Thank the stars,” she muttered as she watched the road signs pass by the tinted car window. She felt a little smug at her tiny victory. 

When they pulled up to the gas station she watched him unfold himself from the driver’s seat. God, if she was uncomfortable she couldn’t imagine how uncomfortable he was crammed behind the steering wheel. He was tall and the car wasn’t exactly roomy. 

“Make it quick,” he told her as his eyes swept the area for anybody suspicious. 

It was early. There weren’t many people out and about yet. The sky was a dark indigo as it prepared for the sun to rise. There was a semi truck parked in the back corner, an SUV, and a minivan full of junk sharing the parking lot with them. 

He must have deemed it safe because he picked up the gas pump and started to fuel up the car. 

Rey rolled her eyes at his caution, but knew the threat was very real. Before she would have passed it off as him overreacting. After being kidnapped herself, she knew the threat was very real. 

She hobbled to the gas station, using the crutches Luke had given her to keep the weight off of her sore ankle. 

The door dinged overhead as she pushed it open. The cashier looked up from where he was scrolling through his cellphone. 

“Do you have a restroom?” Rey asked. 

The cashier pointed wordlessly to the restroom in the back corner of the gas station before returning his attention to his phone. 

The bathroom was small and cramped, but she managed. When she finished, she hobbled through the store looking for something to eat. She plucked a few snack cakes, a bag of chips, and a few bottles of water from the shelves. It was hard for her to carry them and use her crutches at the same time. 

She felt another customer’s eyes on her as she did her best to make her way to the counter. Rey looked up and met his gaze. She was a little surprised when he didn’t look away. Most people did when making eye contact with strangers. 

“Do you need help?”

“No thank you. I’ve got a handle on it.”

After paying for their stuff (in cash because according to Kylo it was ‘untraceable’) she hobbled around the building towards the car.

“Are you sure you don’t want my help carrying all of that stuff?” The man from inside asked.

Rey stopped hobbling and studied him, her heart picking up speed. “No, I’ve got it.” 

“Are you sure?” 

“I’m sure,” she said coldly. He was starting to give her a strange vibe, like he was being a little too helpful. 

She had hobbled just another step when she felt his hand on her shoulder. “Seriously, let me help.” 

Her eyes narrowed and she set her jaw stubbornly, “I said I’m fine!” 

He pulled a gun from inside his jacket and clicked the safety off. “I said let me help.”

From the tone of his voice she knew he wasn’t kidding. If he was part of the First Order he would shoot her without hesitation. She was collateral damage to begin with. It had never been part of their plan to let her escape. 

His free hand grabbed her jacket and started to pull her in the opposite direction of Kylo and his fancy car. 

Desperate, Rey swung her crutch and whacked him in the head. “Get off of me!” She staggered back, her ankle shooting pain up her leg in protest. She whacked him again. 

“You stupid bitch!” He growled lifting his gun. 

“That’s no way to talk to a lady.” She had no idea where Kylo had come from, but his voice was deadly cool. It sent shivers down her spine. 

The man snapped his head around to look at him. “It’s  _ you _ ,” he growled. The grip on his gun had grown unsteady, despite the ferocity in his voice. 

Kylo’s movements were so smooth and fluid as he reached out grabbed the man’s wrist, twisting it until there was an audible  _ pop _ and he dropped the gun. Then, he grabbed the man’s head and shoved it forcefully against the brick. It rebounded like a basketball with a disgusting crack. 

The man slumped to the ground, unconscious. 

“We have to go,” he told her. 

Rey stared at the unconscious man, her mouth open. He had just made that look so effortless! No wonder he had been hired by Snoke to be a professional killer. 

Before she could come to her senses and object, he scooped her up and started to carry her and their things across the parking lot. 

“I have my crutches! I can walk!” She argued with him. 

He ignored her and dropped her into the passenger seat of the car. He slid behind the steering wheel and sped out of the parking the lot. “The next time I tell you we aren’t stopping,  _ we aren’t stopping _ .” 


End file.
